Glendin was at the door.  He fumbled behind him, found the knob, and swung it open.

“If you double-cross me,” said Drew, “all that I’ve ever done to any man before will be nothing to what I’ll do to you, Glendin.”

And the deputy cried, his voice gone shrill and high, “I ain’t done nothin’ that ain’t been done before!”

And he vanished through the doorway.  Drew followed and looked after the deputy, who galloped like a fugitive over the hills.

“Shall I follow him?” he muttered to himself, but a faint groan reached him from the bedroom.

He turned on his heel and went back to Calamity Ben and the doctor.

CHAPTER XXXIV

CRITICISM

After the first burst of speed, Bard resigned himself to following Sally, knowing that he could never catch her, first because her horse carried a burden so much lighter than his own, but above all because the girl seemed to know every rock and twist in the trail, and rode as courageously through the night as if it had been broad day.

She was following a course as straight as a crow’s flight between the ranch of Drew and his old place, a desperate trail that veered and twisted up the side of the mountain and then lurched headlong down on the farther side of the crest.  Half a dozen times Anthony checked his horse and shook his head at the trail, but always the figure of the girl, glimmering through the dusk ahead, challenged and drove him on.

Out of the sharp descent of the downward trail they broke suddenly onto the comparatively smooth floor of the valley, and he followed her at a gallop which ended in front of the old house of Drew.  They had been far less than five hours on the way, yet his long detour to the south had given him three days of hard riding to cover the same points.  His desire to meet Logan again became almost a passion.  He swung to the ground, and advanced to Sally with his hands outstretched.

“You’ve shown me the short cut, all right,” he said, “and I thank you a thousand times, Sally.  So-long, and good luck to you.”

She disregarded his extended hand.

“Want me to leave you here, Bard?”

“You certainly can’t stay.”

She slipped from her horse and jerked the reins over its head.  In another moment she had untied the cinch and drawn off the saddle.  She held its weight easily on one forearm.  Actions, after all, are more eloquent than words.

“I suppose,” he said gloomily, “that if I’d asked you to stay you’d have ridden off at once?”

She did not answer for a moment, and he strained his eyes to read her expression through the dark.  At length she laughed with a new note in her voice that drew her strangely close to him.  During the long ride he had come to feel toward her as toward another man, as strong as himself, almost, as fine a horseman, and much surer of herself on that wild trail; but now the laughter in an instant rubbed all this away.  It was rather low, and with a throaty quality of richness.  The pulse of the sound was like a light finger tapping some marvellously sensitive chord within him.