"He knows I shoot straight. Until his partner comes and helps him get his rifle, he'll stop in the woods."
"But perhaps the other's not far off."
"He's at the ranch," said Margaret "He'd stop to see if you were about and try to find out something from father. Father would keep him as long as possible——" She stopped and turning her head resumed: "But the first fellow knows a woman shot his horse. When I put up the rifle, he was riding for the door."
"I expect that is so," said Jimmy. "After all, you must go to your cousin's. Let's start!"
Margaret said nothing. When Jimmy brought her horse she got up and he ran by her stirrup. For a time she went up the valley, and then turning back obliquely through thin timber, pushed up a steep hill. Near the top she stopped and Jimmy got his breath and looked down across the trees. Dusk was falling and all was very quiet. Gloom had invaded the clearing, but he saw a small dark object he knew was the policeman's horse. A thin plume of smoke went up from his house; his fire was burning, and he wondered when it would burn again. For a few moments he was moved by a strange melancholy, and then his heart beat.
"I hate to go away. If you were not with me, I think I'd stay and risk it all," he said. "I was happy at the ranch; in fact, I soon began to see I hadn't known real happiness before. At the beginning I was puzzled, but now I can account for it. You were at Kelshope——"
"Not long since you didn't want me to go with you," Margaret remarked.
"Oh, well," said Jimmy with some awkwardness, "you hadn't yet shot the policeman's horse."
Margaret said nothing and he seized the bridle, pulled 'round the cayuse, and forced her to look down.
"Will you marry me at the Mission, Margaret?"