“We’ve got to,” said Hard, simply, “What else is there to do?”
Clara did not answer but looked longingly back toward the spot in the cottonwoods.
“Don’t play Lot’s wife, Clara; keep on looking forward. It’s our only hope.”
“Lot’s wife always appealed to my sympathies,” said Clara, pensively. “I think she was probably a settled sort of a woman, married to one of these men who like change. It must have irritated her awfully to have to pack up and move when she was so comfortable. Oh, Henry, that’s not wind blowing the dust! It’s men—horsemen!”
“It does look like it.”
“They’re coming this way. I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.” Hard’s voice was anxious. “If we had a bit of shelter——”
They looked anxiously about, but the flatness of the country offered no opportunity for anything larger than a gopher to hide. Trees and bushes, alike too small for shelter, and little rises of land, hard enough to climb but easily visible to anyone on horseback, were all that offered themselves. In the distance an arroyo looked promising, but it was far and the line of riders very near.
“We’ve got to make a break for it, anyhow,” said Hard, at last. “It’s off the road. It’s our only chance; that, and the possibility that they may be troops and in too much of a hurry to stop for the likes of us. Come on.”
Clara sighed and quickened her pace. They left the road and struck across country toward the arroyo.