“Judy, I think you can answer that question, and that you have come here to help my friends,” replied the rancher.
“Fer why do ye think that?”
The rancher pointed to the rifle in Judy’s saddle boot.
“Are you going hunting, Judy?” he asked significantly.
Judy flushed and turned to the girls.
“I reckon I better tell ye now what I come heah to say—what I heard this mornin’. Wal, it was this way: Your folks and some rustlers had a fight in the mountains last night. It warn’t much of a fight, but I heard that Sam Conifer had been killed and thet Miss Gray’s husband and Hippy had been shot and that there was liable to be trouble at Red Gulch, and I reckoned that I was your friend and that you folks needed a friend right now, and that’s why Judy Hornby is heah.”
Nora Wingate, uttering a moan, toppled over in a swoon, the other Overland girls gazing at the mountain girl in a stunned sort of way, while Judy fumbled awkwardly with her sombrero.
CHAPTER XXII
RIDERS OF THE NIGHT
No heed was given to Nora Wingate’s faint, and for several seconds no one spoke.
“Gosh a-mighty!” exploded Joe Bindloss.