Finally the masked man got to his feet, looking down at Rex.
‘I ain’t got the sense that Gawd gave geese in Ireland,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve knowed lotsa married folks, and I’ve had me a girl once or twicet; but I never knowed that any damn woman ever cared enough f’r a man to slough off a chance to save her life—f’r him.’ He stepped over to Rex and quickly unfastened the ropes.
‘You’re not going to leave him here?’ asked Nan, hardly believing that such was his intention.
‘Not if yuh want him that damn bad. T’ me, he don’t amount to a damn, and I’d jist as soon use him for buzzard bait as not; but if you—you two wait here. I’ve got to git my bronc. There’s a way out the lower end of this cañon, if I can remember it. It’s a long ways around, but it can’t be helped.’
He picked up his rope, swung it over his arm, grasped his rifle, and went stumbling up the cañon, while Nan and Rex stood there, looking at each other.
‘Thank God!’ breathed Nan.
‘Did you mean what you told him, Nan? Did you mean that you love me?’
‘Well, I would have stayed,’ she said simply.
Hashknife had little trouble in following Morgan, although Morgan seemed to be traveling more by guess than from any pretense of following a trail. It was so steep that a horse was obliged to almost sit on his rump and keep angling from one side to another to keep from going headlong into the cañon.
About halfway down the side of the cañon, Hashknife’s gray horse shoved loose a boulder of considerable size, which went bounding down the steep slope, crashing through the brush, and splitting itself on the boulders at the bottom.