Betty trembled so inwardly that she could say nothing; but luckily the sheriff did not consider there was anything she could say.
“If you and Joe Hurley come along from Canyon Pass, you’d have seen this feller, if he’d gone that way. And I’m mighty sure he wouldn’t aim for the Pass. I reckon, boys, Lamberton is our best bet. Good-day to ye, ma’am.”
He removed his hat again, and the other two did the same. But they did not ride south at the fork of the trail without casting back more than one admiring glance at the trim figure and quietly beautiful face of Betty Hunt.
She cantered away on the Canyon Pass trail. She had something else to think of now. By keeping silent had she aided a thief to escape the hands of justice? But, then, perhaps she had saved a man’s life as well!
CHAPTER XVIII—THE SHADOW ON BETTY’S PATH
It was still a beautiful summer morning, but its charm was quite lost for Betty Hunt. Her appreciation of the beautiful in nature was submerged by what had so overwhelmed her heart and her thought.
The thing which had been so long hidden in her mind—that secret which had changed Betty so desperately at the end of her schooldays—had risen to the surface again.
But she had not gone far when something arose that made Betty wish she had not left Joe Hurley beside the singing river. Her staid old pony began to limp.
She was a good rider, but she had not the first idea what to do when a horse went lame, except to get down and relieve the poor creature of her weight. But she was much too far from Canyon Pass to walk and lead the hobbling pony.
The wise old cow pony made much of the affliction, and when Betty tried to urge it on the limping horse was a pitiful sight indeed. Betty had never been taught the proper way to pick up a horse’s foot to examine it for a stone in the frog; but the pony lifted the crippled member in such a way that the girl managed to get at it. The stone was there, a sharp-edged flint wedged into the frog, but the girl had no instrument with which to get it out.