"Oh, lookout! The bushes! The bushes! Don't trample my thimble-berries!"
But Lanpher, heeding not at all Molly's cries of warning, spurred his sweating horse through the thimble-berry growth, breaking down three shrubs, and splashed cat-a-corneredly across the spring, the brook, and several rows of flowers.
The garden looked as if a miniature cyclone had passed that way.
Midway across the garden Lanpher's horse halted—halted because a flying figure in chaps had appeared from nowhere and seized it by the rein. But the horse did more than halt. In obedience to a powerful jerk administered by the man in chaps the horse pivoted on its forelegs and slid its rider out of the saddle and deposited him a-sprawl and face downward among the flowers.
Lanpher arose, snarling, to face a levelled sixshooter. It did not signify that Racey had not drawn the weapon. He was perfectly capable of shooting through the bottom of his holster and Lanpher knew it. And Racey knew that he knew it.
"Get out of this garden!" ordered Racey. "Take yore friend with you," he added, tossing the horse's bridle to Lanpher. "And if I were you I'd walk a heap careful between the rows. I just wouldn't go a-busting any more of these posies."
Lanpher went. He went carefully. He was followed quite as carefully by
Racey Dawson.
When Lanpher was free of the neat rows he looked up venomously into the face of Alicran Skeel who had meticulously ridden round the garden.
"I was wondering where you was," Lanpher remarked with deep meaning.
"I ain't rooting up nobody's gyarden," Alicran returned, cheerfully.
"And don't wonder too hard. Might strain yore intellect or something.
I'll always be where I aim to be—always. You done scratched yore
face, Lanpher."