She saw him lean forward in the saddle, noted how the horse leaped under him, took anxious stock of the manner in which he carried his rifle. Then suddenly there came back into Terry's cheeks the good hot blood, into her eyes the sparkle and shine, into her heart something akin to the sheer joy of battle. Had she a horse she would not have hung back for want of a rifle, but would have ridden after him, with him. As it was she cried out ringingly:
"God go with you, Steve Packard! I'm proud of you!"
She might not ride with him; at least she would not crouch and cringe and hide her eyes. She would watch him as he rode, watch him as he fought, watch him to the end even though he slipped from the saddle.
So she made her way hastily to a point of vantage, running the brief distance lying between the slight knoll on which she stood and the eastern edge of the valley where the rugged peaks rose abruptly. She scrambled up the first bit of slope, her heart beating wildly, expecting each second to hear the snap and crackle of rifle-fire. She turned and looked back; the floor of the valley was too uneven for her to have a sweeping view.
She began climbing again. Great boulders rose in her path; somehow she got on them and over them. Broken slabs of granite strewed the way; she made of them steps on which to mount higher and higher. Still no sound of a shot and at last, upon a narrow shelf of rock offering sufficient foothold, she stopped.
Here, with her back tight pressed to a rock, her hands gripping at irregularities on each side of her to steady her, she sent her questing gaze down into Drop Off Valley.
Now she understood why there had as yet been no rifle-fire. The day, coming on slowly, still offered more gloom than radiance, but she could pick out two figures clearly. One was that of Steve. He had ridden on ahead of his men, perhaps a hundred feet ahead, and was upon a bit of higher ground.
The other form, bulking big in the thin light, was indisputably that of old man Packard. Like Steve, he had ridden on in advance of his men. She could just make out a dull mass yonder behind him which might have been but a group of boulders had not the impatient stirring showed where his horsemen were waiting.
It was very still there on the uplands in the dim dawning. In breathless watchfulness a few men behind Steve watched; a few men behind old man Packard watched; a girl upon a granite peak watched. Down toward the lower end of the valley where the floor of the plateau dropped precipitously into the steep-walled cañon the fire Terry had set was still burning fiercely. But the wind carried its fury away from them, so that it was only an evil whisper.
Here and there, elsewhere in the valley, the fires still burned on. There were wide stretches across which the flames had already swept so that now they were ink-black, burnt-out, smoking a little. Upon such an open space, still hot under their horses' hoofs, the two Packards, grandfather and grandson, came face to face. And they were stern, ominously set faces confronting each other.