The girl tried to obey. But evidently there had been too much previous strain. As she kicked a boyish leg over the saddle horn, she collapsed in his arms—absolutely out, in a dead faint.
With suddenly terrified tenderness the sergeant—known throughout The Force as absolutely "hard boiled"—held her from any possibility of a fall. The flame head fell against his chest, pillowed upon the honor ribbons which, through luck and utter unconsciousness of death-fear, he had brought back from the World War. Her lips were parted, her eyes closed. But he noticed, as his arms tightened about her and he leaned to utter anxious words into the fragrance of her hair, that a rich, healthful color began to spread upward into the creamy-tan of her cheeks. Recent years in Arctic patrol, where Eskimo squaws didn't know how to pass out of any picture except from over-feeding on blubber, hadn't sharpened his experience, but he would have taken King's oath that no fainting girl ever looked so much like a blush-rose at dawn.
"Bernice!" he demanded, remembering the name she had given.
As suddenly as she had passed did she snap out of the faint. There was a more or less spasmodic hold upon him as she caught herself together.
"Mount the silver beast—quick!" he directed.
"But, sergeant, there are five of them!" she cried. "I counted, looking back from the top of the hill, just the other side of the boundary."
"You heard me, girl," he snarled, a tone that few had dared disobey. "Make a dust away from here."
Bernice Gallegher watched his square-shouldered back, upon the scarlet coat on which the moon was playing so vividly, as he strode down the road to face, single-handed, the wild, rough-riding quintet who had followed the supposed boy, intent upon a necktie-party. For no fraction of a second had she thought of accepting his generous offer—considered making a "dust" away from her Providence-sent protector. Like a streak, she took after him.
The galloping horses of the outlaw posse pounded nearer and nearer. Sergt. Childress set himself squarely in the road, ready for King's-name confrontation. The pad-pad of the girl's rushing feet caused him to turn.
"You—here?" he grumbled, as though disbelieving that his order had been disobeyed. "Thought I told you—"