Quietly she led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above hailed her with a startled shout as she flew past. Again, a shot rang out, the bullet whistling close to her ear. But nothing could stop her till she reached the man she meant to save. 178
And so it happened that Richard Bellamy, walking at the head of his herd, saw a horse gallop wildly round a bend almost into his bleating flock. The rider dragged the bronco to a halt and slipped to the ground. She stood there ashen-hued, clinging to the saddle-horn and swaying slightly.
“I’m in time.... Thank God!... Thank God!” her parched lips murmured.
“Miss Lee! You here?” he cried.
They looked at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots, his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad, flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The still force of him somehow carried reassurance to her. Such virility of manhood could not be marked for extinction.
She panted out her story, and his eyes never left her.
“You have risked your life to save mine and my herders,” he said very quietly.
“You must go back,” she replied irrelevantly.
“I can’t. The entrance is guarded.”
This startled her. “Then—what shall we do?”