For full half a minute he sat motionless, his face distorted with baffled fury and swiftly growing fear. Then his eyes flashed toward the hills on the right and swept them searchingly. A second later he had turned his cayuse and was speeding towards a narrow break between two spurs, keeping a tight hold on the girl’s bridle.
“You try any monkey tricks,” he flung back over one shoulder, “and I’ll—kill yuh.”
Mary made no answer, but the savage ferocity of his tone made her shiver, and she instantly abandoned the plan she had formed of trying, by little touches of hand and heel, to make Freckles still further hamper Lynch’s actions. Through the settling dust-haze she had seen the cause of his perturbation—a single horseman less than a mile away galloping straight toward them—and felt that her enemy was cornered. But the very strength of her exultation gave her a passionate longing for life and happiness, and 328 she realized vividly the truth of Lynch’s callous, sneering words, that when one actually got down to it, it was not an easy thing to die. She must take no chances. Surely it could be only a question of a little time now before she would be free.
But presently her high confidence began to fade. With the manner of one on perfectly familiar ground, Lynch rode straight into the break between the rocks, which proved to be the entrance to a gully that widened and then turned sharply to the right. Here he stopped and ordered Mary to ride in front of him.
“You go ahead,” he growled, flinging her the reins. “Don’t lose any time, neither.”
Without question she obeyed, choosing the way from his occasional, tersely flung directions. This led them upward, slowly, steadily with many a twist and turn, until at length, passing through a narrow opening in the rocks, Mary came out suddenly on a ledge scarcely a dozen feet in width. On one side the cliffs rose in irregular, cluttered masses, too steep to climb. On the other was a precipitous drop into a cañon of unknown depth.
“Get down,” ordered Lynch, swinging out of his saddle.
As she slid to the ground he handed her his bridle-reins.
“Take the horses a ways back an’ hold ’em,” he told her curtly. “An’ remember this: Not a peep out of 329 yuh, or it’ll be yore last. Nobody yet’s double-crossed me an’ got away with it, an’ nobody ain’t goin’ to—not even a woman. That cañon’s pretty deep, an’ there’s sharp stones a-plenty at the bottom.”
White-faced and tight-lipped, she turned away from him without a word and led the two horses back to the point he indicated. The ledge, which sloped sharply upward, was cluttered with loose stones, and she moved slowly, avoiding these with instinctive caution and trying not to glance toward the precipice. A dozen feet away she paused, holding the horses tightly by their bridles and pressing herself against the lathered neck of Freckles, who she knew was steady. Then she glanced back and caught her breath with a swift, sudden intake.