"Kill whom?" burst in Brant, springing down the bank fully awakened to the realization of some unknown emergency. "My dear Miss Spencer, tell me your story quickly if you wish me to act. Who is in danger, and from what?"
The girl burst into tears, but struggled bravely through with her message.
"It's those awful men, the roughs and rowdies down in Glencaid. They say he murdered Red Slavin, that big gambler who spoke to me this morning, but he did n't, for I saw the man who did, and so did Mr. Wynkoop. He jumped out of the saloon window, his hand all bloody, and ran away. But they 've got him and the town marshal up behind the Shasta dump, and swear they're going to hang him if they can only take him alive. Oh, just hear those awful guns!"
"Yes, but who is it?"
"Bob Hampton, and—and he never did it at all."
Before Brant could either move or speak, Naida swept past him, down the steep bank, and her voice rang out clear, insistent. "Bob Hampton attacked by a mob? Is that true, Phoebe? They are fighting at the Shasta dump, you say? Lieutenant Brant, you must act—you must act now, for my sake!"
She sprang toward the horse, nerved by Brant's apparent slowness to respond, and loosened the rein from the scrub oak. "Then I will myself go to him, even if they kill me also, the cowards!"
But Brant had got his head now. Grasping her arm and the rein of the plunging horse, "You will go home," he commanded, with the tone of military authority. "Go home with Miss Spencer. All that can possibly be done to aid Hampton I shall do—will you go?"
She looked helplessly into his face. "You—you don't like him," she faltered; "I know you don't. But—but you will help him, won't you, for my sake?"
He crushed back an oath. "Like him or not like him, I will save him if it be in the power of man. Now will you go?"