“You made it,” he panted, as a man might who had been running hard.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But they’ll soon know. Let us get away.”
“If you hadn’t come I was going in to kill him.”
She noticed the hard glitter in his eyes as he spoke, the crouched look of the padding tiger ready for its kill. The man was torn with hatred and jealousy.
Already they were moving back through the rocks to a dry wash that ran through the valley. The bed of this they followed for nearly a mile. 271 Deflecting from it they pushed across the valley toward what appeared to be a sheer rock wall. With a twist to the left they swung back of a face of rock, turned sharply to the right, and found themselves in a fissure Melissy had not at all expected. Here ran a little cañon known only to those few who rode up and down it on the nefarious business of their unwholesome lives.
Boone spoke harshly, breaking for the first time in half an hour his moody silence.
“Safe at last. By God, I’ve evened my score with Black MacQueen.”
And from the cliff above came the answer—a laugh full of mocking deviltry and malice.
The Arkansan turned upon Melissy a startled face of agony, in which despair and hate stood out of a yellow pallor.
“Trapped.”