Larry set his lips for a moment and his face showed curiously white. “Think, my dear!” he said hoarsely. “It would not be fair to you. Miss Schuyler will take you away in a week or two, and I will come for you. I dare not do anything you may be sorry for; and they may find you are not in the house. You must go home before my strength gives way.”
The emotion she had struggled with swept Hetty away. “Go home!” she said passionately. “They wanted to kill you—and I can never go back now. If I did, they would know I had warned you—and believe—Can’t you understand, Larry?”
Then, the situation flashed upon Grant, and he recognized, as Hetty had done, that she had cast herself adrift when she left the house to warn him. He knew the cattle-baron’s vindictiveness, and that his daughter had committed an offence he could not forgive. That left but one escape from the difficulty, and it was the one his own passions, which he had striven to crush down, urged him to.
“Then,” he said in a strained voice, “you must come with me. We can be married to-morrow.”
Hetty held up her hands to him. “I am ready. Oh, be quick. They may come any minute!”
Larry swept his glance towards the house, and saw a shaft of radiance stream out as the great door opened. Then, he heard Flora Schuyler’s voice, and, leaning downwards from the saddle, grasped both the girl’s hands.
“Yes,” he said, very quietly, “they are coming now. Spring when I lift you. Your foot on my foot—I have you!”
It was done. Hetty was active and slender, the man muscular, and both had been taught, not only to ride, but master the half-wild broncho by a superior daring and an equal agility, in a land where the horse is not infrequently roped and thrown before it is mounted. But Larry breathed hard as, with his arm about her waist, he held the girl in front of him, and felt her cheek hot against his lips. The next moment he pressed his heels home and the big horse swung forward under its double burden.
A shout rang out behind them, and there was a crackling in the bluff. Then, a rifle flashed, and just as a cloud drove across the moon, another cry rose up:
“Quit firing. He has the girl with him!”