He believed that there was one chance left to him,
and that was to outdistance the news of the two killings
by riding straight north. There he would stop
at the first town, in some manner fill his pockets
with money, and in some manner find both horse and
friend.
Andrew Lanning was both simple and credulous; but
it must be remembered that he had led a sheltered
life, comparatively speaking; he had been brought
up between a blacksmith shop on the one hand and Uncle
Jasper on the other, and the gaps in his knowledge
of men were many and huge. The prime necessity
now was speed to the northward. So Andy flung
himself into the saddle and drove his horse north
at the jogging, rocking lope of the cattle pony.
He was in a shallow basin which luckily pointed in
the right direction for him. The hills sloped
down to it from either side in long fingers, with
narrow gullies between, but as Andy passed the first
of these pointing fingers a new thought came to him.
It might be—why not?—that the
posse had made only a pretense of withdrawing at once
with the body of the dead man. Perhaps they had
only waited until they were out of sight and had then
circled swiftly around, leaving one man with the body.
They might be waiting now at the mouth of any of these
gullies.
No sooner had the thought come to Andy than he whitened.
The pinto had been worked hard that morning and all
the night before, but now Andy sent the spurs home
without mercy as he shot up the basin at full speed,
with his revolver drawn, ready for a snap shot and
a drop behind the far side of his horse.
For half an hour he rode in this fashion with his
heart beating at his teeth. And each canyon as
he passed was empty, and each had some shrub, like
a crouching man, to startle him and upraise the revolver.
At length, with the pinto wheezing from this new effort,
he drew back to an easier gait. But still he
had a companion ceaselessly following like the shadow
of the horse he rode. It was fear, and it would
never leave him.
After that forced and early rising, the rest of the
house had remained awake, but Anne Withero was gifted
with an exceptionally strong set of nerves. She
had gone back to bed and fallen promptly into a pleasant
sleep. And when she wakened all that happened
in the night was filmed over and had become dreamlike.
No one disturbed her rest; but when she went down
to a late breakfast she found Charles Merchant lingering
in the room. He had questioned her closely, and
after a moment of thought she told him exactly what
had happened, because she was perfectly aware that
he would not believe a word of it. And she was
right. He had sat opposite her, drumming his
fingers without noise on the table, with a smile now
and then which was tinged, she thought, with insolence.
