In her first terror she had dropped the reins. Her hands had slipped unconsciously under the lap-robe. Now one of them touched something chilly on the seat beside her. She almost gasped her relief. It was the selfsame revolver with which she had tried to hold up the Texan.
In the midst of Struve’s flood of invective the girl’s hand leaped quickly from the lap-robe. A cold muzzle pressed against his cheek brought the convict’s outburst to an abrupt close.
“If you move I’ll fire,” she said quietly.
For a long moment their gazes gripped, the deadly clear eyes of the young woman and the furtive ones of the miscreant. Underneath the robe she felt a stealthy movement, and cried out quickly: “Hands up!”
With a curse he threw his arms into the air.
“Jump out! Don’t lower your hands!”
“My ankle,” he whined.
“Jump!”
His leap cleared the wheel and threw him to the ground. She caught up the whip and slashed wildly at the horses. They sprang forward in a panic, flying wildly across the open plain. Margaret heard a revolver bark twice. After that she was so busy trying to regain control of the team that she could think of nothing else. The horses were young and full of spirit, so that she had all she could do to keep the trap from being upset. It wound in and out among the hills, taking perilous places safely to her surprise, and was at last brought to a stop only by the narrowing of a draw into which the animals had bolted.
They were quiet now beyond any chance of farther runaway, even had it been possible. Margaret dropped the lines on the dashboard and began to sob, at first in slow deep breaths and then in quicker uneven ones. Plucky as she was, the girl had had about all her nerves could stand for one day. The strain of her preparation for flight, the long night drive, and the excitement of the last two hours were telling on her in a hysterical reaction.
She wept herself out, dried her eyes with dabs of her little kerchief, and came back to a calm consideration of her situation. She must get back to Fort Lincoln as soon as possible, and she must do it without encountering the convict. For in the course of the runaway the revolver had been jolted from the trap.
Not quite sure in which direction lay the road, she got out from the trap, topped the hill to her right, and looked around. She saw in all directions nothing but rolling hilltops, merging into each other even to the horizon’s edge. In her wild flight among these hills she had lost count of direction. She had not yet learned how to know north from south by the sun, and if she had it would have helped but little since she knew only vaguely the general line of their travel.
She felt sure that from the top of the next rise she could locate the road, but once there she was as uncertain as before. Before giving up she breasted a third hill to the summit. Still no signs of the road. Reluctantly she retraced her steps, and at the foot of the hill was uncertain whether she should turn to right or left. Choosing the left, from the next height she could see nothing of the team. She was not yet alarmed. It was ridiculous to suppose that she was lost. How could she be when she was within three or four hundred yards of the rig? She would cut across the shoulder into the wash and climb the hillock beyond. For behind it the team must certainly be.
But at her journey’s end her eyes were gladdened by no sight of the horses. Every draw was like its neighbor, every rolling rise a replica of the next. The truth came home to a sinking heart. She was lost in one of the great deserts of Texas. She would wander for days as others had, and she would die in the end of starvation and thirst. Nobody would know where to look for her, since she had told none where she was going. Only yesterday at her boarding-house she had heard a young man tell how a tenderfoot had been found dead after he had wandered round and round in intersecting circles. She sank down and gave herself up to despair.
But not for long. She was too full of grit to give up without a long fight. How many hours she wandered Margaret Kinney did not know. The sun was high in the heavens when she began. It had given place to flooding moonlight long before her worn feet and aching heart gave up the search for some human landmark. Once at least she must have slept, for she stared up from a spot where she had sunk down to look up into a starry sky that was new to her.
The moon had sailed across the vault and grown chill and faint with dawn before she gave up, completely exhausted, and when her eyes opened again it was upon a young day fresh and sweet. She knew by this time hunger and an acute thirst. As the day increased, this last she knew must be a torment of swollen tongue and lime-kiln throat. Yesterday she had cried for help till her voice had failed. A dumb despair had now driven away her terror.
And then into the awful silence leaped a sound like a messenger of hope. It was a shot, so close that she could see the smoke rise from an arroyo near. She ran forward till she could look down into it and caught sight of a man with a dead bird in his hand. He had his back toward her and was stooping over a fire. Slithering down over the short dry grass, she was upon him almost before she could stop.
“I’ve been lost all night and all yesterday,” she sobbed.
He snatched at the revolver lying beside him and whirled like a flash as if to meet an attack. The girl’s pumping heart seemed to stand still. The man snarling at her was the convict Struve.
Chapter V.
Larry Neill to the Rescue
The snarl gave way slowly to a grim more malign than his open hostility.
“So you’ve been lost! And now you’re found—come safe back to your loving brother. Ain’t that luck for you? Hunted all over Texas till you found him, eh? And it’s a powerful big State, too.”
She caught sight of something that made her forget all else.
“Have you got water in that canteen?” she asked, her parched eyes staring at it.
“Yes, dearie.”
“Give it me.”
He squatted tailor-fashion on the ground, put the canteen between his knees, and shoved his teeth in a crooked grin.
“Thirsty?”
“I’m dying for a drink.”
“You look like a right lively corpse.”
“Give it to me.”
“Will you take it now or wait till you get it?”
“My throat’s baked. I want water,” she said hoarsely.
“Most folks want a lot they never get.”
She walked toward him with her hand outstretched.
“I tell you I’ve got to have it.”
He laughed evilly. “Water’s at a premium right now. Likely there ain’t enough here to get us both out of this infernal hole alive. Yes, it’s sure at a premium.”
He let his eye drift insolently over her and take stock of his prey, in the same feline way of a cat with a mouse, gloating over her distress and the details of her young good looks. His tainted gaze got the faint pure touch of color in her face, the reddish tinge of her wavy brown hair, the desirable sweetness of her rounded maidenhood. If her step dragged, if dusky hollows shadowed her lids, if the native courage had been washed from the hopeless eyes, there was no spring of manliness hid deep within him that rose to refresh her exhaustion. No pity or compunction stirred at her sweet helplessness.
“Do you want my money?” she asked wearily.
“I’ll take that to begin with.”
She tossed him her purse. “There should be seventy dollars there. May I have a drink now?”
“Not yet, my dear. First you got to come up to me and put your arms