“But they’ll kill you—Mrs. Chadron can’t hold them back—she doesn’t want to hold them back—for she’s full of Chadron’s lies about you. Your horse is worn out—you can’t outrun them.”
“How many are there besides the five I saw?”
“Only Dalton, and he’s supposed to be crippled.”
“Oh, well,” he said, easily, as if only five whole men and a cripple didn’t amount to so much, taken all in the day’s work.
“Your men up there need your leadership and advice. Take my horse and go; he can outrun them.”
He looked at her admiringly, but with a little reproving shake of the head.
“There’s neither mercy nor manhood in any man that rides in Saul Chadron’s pay,” he told her. “They’d overtake you on this old plug before you’d gone a mile. The one condition on which I part company with you is that you ride ahead, this instant, and that you put your horse through for all that’s in him.”
“And leave you to fight six of them!”
“Staying here would only put you in unnecessary danger. I ask you to go, and go at once.”