“You said Molly’s at the end of our journey, ma’am,” Lightning said quietly. “The things by the way don’t matter a curse.”
Blanche smiled as she listened. Her heart warmed towards this queer creature with his ragged whisker, and his long guns with their many barrels.
She inclined her head, and turned Beelzebub to the path.
“Then keep close on my trail,” she said, and lifted her reins.
The procession started. Beelzebub moved confidently. The creature was familiar with every foot of the path, and seemed to rejoice in the rapid dropping away of the gloomy lake-shore as he mounted the sometimes almost precipitous incline. Lightning came hard behind him, and beyond him trailed the pinto on the end of a rawhide rope.
There was not a moment of hesitation on the part of the horses new to the ascent. Lightning was a master in the saddle, and his horse had the added encouragement of the black quarters directly in front of his nose. The pinto, behind, knew her stable companion, and was more than content.
The path quickly became a rocky ledge about four feet wide, with the wall of the hill sloping back from it. It mounted sharply and then flattened; and, a few yards farther on, it rose sharply again.
Lightning seemed quite unconcerned with its vagaries. He seemed to disregard its turnings and twistings, and its width at no time gave him a moment of unease. He once or twice glanced below as the precipice deepened, and the flash of sunlit waters caught his eye; but his chief concern was the well-clad woman’s figure, ahead of him, and the thing that had already passed between them.
Half-way up the mounting path Beelzebub dislodged a small rock, which clattered as it rolled over the precipice and hurtled to the depths below. The horse gave no heed to it, but its rider was startled. Lightning saw her movement of sudden apprehension.
“Leave him his head, ma’am,” he warned. “He’s got elegant nerve.”