"Are you all right? Oh, your head! It's hurt—see, the blood?" She clung to him and searched his face with her eyes, while he tried to soothe her.
"It's nothing, just a bad bruise, but how—?" He checked the question upon his lips. "We mustn't stay here. Moran may have...."
"There ain't nobody here. I wish to Gawd he was here. I'd...." Santry's face was twisted with rage. "'Course," he added, "I knew it was him, so'd Lem Trowbridge. But we come right smack through their camp, and there was nobody there. This here skunk that I plugged, he must be the only one. I got him, I reckon."
"Yes," Wade answered simply, as he watched three men from the Trowbridge ranch ride up to them. "Where's Lem?"
Dorothy explained that she had set out to find him in company with the man she had met at the big pine; but on the way they had met Santry and the three cowboys. One of the men had then ridden on to Bald Knob after Trowbridge, while the rest had come straight to Coyote Springs. She tried to speak quietly, but she could not keep the song of happiness out of her voice, or the love out of her eyes.
"Then you did this, too?" Wade wrung her hands and looked at her proudly. "But how—I don't understand?"
"I'll tell you, when we're in the saddle," she said shyly. "There's so much to tell."
"Santry!" The ranch owner threw his arm fondly across the shoulders of his foreman. "You, too, and Lem. I've got all my friends to thank. Say, dig a grave for this fellow, Neale. There was a lion around here last night, and I'd hate to have him get Neale, bad as he was. Then—" His voice became crisp with determination. "Hunt up Trowbridge and ask him to pass the word for everybody to meet at the ranch, as soon as possible. There's going to be open war here in the valley from now on." He turned again to Dorothy. "Dorothy, I'm going to take you right on home with me."
"Oh, but...." The gleam in his eyes made her pause. She was too glad to have found him safe, besides, to wish to cross him in whatever might be his purpose.
"No buts about it. I'll send for your mother, too, of course. Town won't be any place for either of you until this business is settled. George!" he called to one of the three cowmen, who rode over to him. "I suppose it'll be all right for you to take orders from me?"