"Who is it?" he demanded again, and she dropped her gaze.
"So that's it!" he jeered. "Your lover is trying to play two games. He's come to beat us to it, has he?"—he licked his lips nervously. "Well, we'll see!"
He hung his spurs in and fanned her horse with his quirt and, still clinging to her bridle, led his wife at a high lope off to the right, swinging behind a shoulder of the hill and climbing up a sharp, wooded draw.
"I'll fool your friend!" he laughed, twenty minutes later when they had climbed a steep ridge and the winded horses had dropped into a walk. "I'll fool him!"
He drew Bayard's automatic, which he had taken from Ann, and looked it over in crafty anticipation.
Ann, after her night and her day of hardship, of ceaseless anxiety, could not cry out. A sound started but went dry and dead in her throat. She sat lax in her saddle, worn and confused and suddenly indifferent. She had been defiant yesterday afternoon for a time; she had been frightened later; with cunning she had scratched her warning on Abe's saddle and with like strategy she had managed to set the great horse free when they were preparing for their early morning start from the Boyd ranch. She had withstood her husband's taunts flung at her through their sleepless night, she had taken in silence his abuse when it became necessary to secure another horse; beside him she had ridden in silence down the valley, knowing him for a crazed man. And now sight of Bayard, the sense of relief that his nearness brought, the sudden fear for his safety at seeing the pistol, reduced her to helplessness.
"You wait here," she heard her husband say.
He followed the order with a threat of some sort, a threat against her life she afterward remembered, dismounted and walked away. At the time his departure left no impression on her. She sat limp in her saddle a long interval, then leaned forward and, face in her horse's mane, gave way to sobbing. The vent for that emotion was relief; how long she cried she did not know, but suddenly she found herself on the ground, looking about, alive to the fact that the silence seemed like that of death.
Cautiously, Lytton crept up over the rocks after he left Ann. His movements gave no hint of his recent weakness; they were quick and jerky, but certain. His lids were narrowed and between them his eyes showed balefully. He held his weapon in his right hand, slightly elevated, ready to shoot. Moisture formed on his forehead and ran down over his cheeks. Now and then his gun hand trembled spasmodically and then he halted until it was firm again.