They moved in a circle, swinging in toward the house, Beck ever keeping Hilton as a direct screen. He stopped and the horse stopped. He listened. He heard soft movements within the house. He thought he heard a faint rustling behind a far corner of the building but a cow, bawling at the moment, obscured the faint sound.
Beck felt a cold damp standing out on his body. From the darkness, from any direction, disaster might strike at any second!
He began to talk to the horse soothingly, moving toward him slowly, but the roan would not understand. Once he was within an arm's length of the bridle, but before he could grasp it the animal had swung his head ever so slightly and was moving off again, passing a corner of the house from where that suggestion of a rustle had come.
And then, of a sudden, the horse leaped sideways, with a startled grunt, as a horse will that comes upon a coiled snake. He lunged toward Beck and Hilton, swinging about on his hind feet, beginning to run for the gate, thoroughly frightened and bent on escape from the thing that alarmed him.
It was Beck's last chance! As the horse leaped toward the gate he sprang back a pace from Hilton, raised both guns and fired, one at the window, one at the doorway. Glass burst and tinkled and he heard the panel of the door again sliver. As he opened fire the great roan swerved; his hoofs spurned the ground in the impatience of fright and Beck, shooting again toward the house, turned and ran swiftly for the fleeing horse.
Down in the shadows the thing which had frightened the horse rose, stumbling into shape. Flame streamed from Beck's guns toward it, but he shot as he ran and his fire was inaccurate. He cried sharply as the animal swung even wider in his circuit toward the gate, sprang forward in long strides, dropped the gun from his right hand, leaped, fastened his fingers about the horn, took two quick strides and vaulted into the saddle.
The animal leaped the half lowered bars and Beck fired again, twice at the house, once at the figure outside, and then flung himself far down over the roan's shoulder as the window belched flame and stabs of it came from about the building and bullets screeched overhead. He fanned the roan's belly with his hat and twenty rods further swung into an erect position again, leaning low as they ate the road.
"A close one, old timer!" he muttered to the horse. "That was a chance!"
And miles further on, when the roan had cooled from his first desperate dash that had carried Tom to unquestionable safety for the night, he said aloud:
"Now what was he doin' there? And how much will he count?"