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He scurried to the buckboard and hopped in. Annersley rose and brought the trader up with him as though the latter were a bit of limp tie-rope. "And now we'll be driftin'," he told the other. Murder burned in the horse-trader's narrow eyes, but immediate physical ambition was lacking. Annersley bulked big. The horse-trader cursed the old man in two languages.
Bannister leaped on the steer, tie-rope in hand. Swiftly his deft hands passed to and fro, making the necessary loops and knots. Then his hands went into the air. The steer was hog-tied. For a few seconds the judges consulted together. "Twenty-nine seconds," announced their spokesman, and at the words a great cheer went up. Bannister had made his tie in record time.
Still wondering, he retraced his steps along the edge of the stream, back to the spot where he had left Keno. Imagine his dismay and consternation when he found the tie-rope broken and the pony -gone! Keno had disappeared! Had he grown restive and wandered away, or had he been stolen by some lawless prowler among the hills?
With the warm thrill of Marette's lips he had become the superman, and as he leaped ashore in the darkness and cut the tie-rope with a single slash of his knife, he wanted to give voice to the thing that was in him as the rivermen had chanted in the glory of their freedom the day the big brigade started north. And he did sing, under his laughing, sobbing breath.
She who had never been whipped in all of her life, she whose soft white body had been held inviolate by idolizing parents, she who had come to hold her own person as sacred as that of a high princess to be beaten by a man! To be lashed across her shoulders with a horse's tie-rope. She, Gloria Gaynor, to have her bedding ripped off her, to be commanded to do a man's bidding and to be whipped!
That he must silence Sefton before Max came up with him was the thought awaking with him. He was fully conscious of his purpose before he knew what it was that had awakened him. Quite close to him was the noise of breaking brush and snapping twigs. Evidently one of the pack animals had broken its tie-rope. He lifted himself upon his elbow, frowning into the darkness.
King slipped Buck's bridle, dropped the tie-rope, and let the animal forage along the fringes of the brook. To Gloria, in a voice which struck her as being as chill as the grey, overcast sky, he said: "Better let your horse eat. We've got to go pretty steady to get anywhere to-day." Gloria got down stiffly from her saddle. In all the days of her life she had never been so unutterably weary.
He had tethered the animal himself; there was no dangling bit of rope to indicate a broken tie-rope. Blenham, the practical, had simply taken thought of detail. "Not missing a single bet, is Blenham," he thought savagely. He swung about and reentered the saloon. A buzz of talk up and down the long room promptly died away as again the eyes of many men travelled his way.
You're on the wrong trail. What do you think I am?" "Same as I always thought." "Then you want to change your opinion of me," said Collie, relinquishing the tie-rope. "I ain't breaking the law, but you are going to hear more about this." "I'll risk that. You can ride right along, pronto." "And you keep Sarko? I guess not! I'll stick."
And it was tied close up against the shore. Marette told him this as they felt their way through brush and reeds. Then he stumbled against something taut and knee-high, and he found it was the tie-rope. Leaving Marette with her back to the anchor tree, he went aboard.
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