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If the redcoats catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself, you'll stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon. Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell." "You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now.
Behind him tore the Flying U boys in a vain effort to head him back into the coulee before mischief was done. Chip drew his breath sharply when the creams swerved out upon the broad hilltop, just as Banjo thundered past with nothing left of his rider but the legs, and with them shorn of their plumpness as the hay dribbled out upon the road.
When he did, he breathed deep, shut his lips upon words that would have frightened her, and went down the steps into the gloom. Beatrice watched him stride away into the dusky silence, and her heart ached with sympathy for him. Then she looked beyond, to where the lights of the Cross ranch twinkled joyously, far down the coulee, and the sweet egotism of happiness enfolded her, shutting him out.
You can't do any good, and you've got to save your nerves. Let pull down the shade " "Oh, I've got to see!" Perversely, she caught up the field glasses from the table, drew them from their case, and, letting down the upper window sash with a slam, focused the glasses upon the river. "He usually crosses right at the mouth of the coulee " She swung the glasses slowly about.
Twice only in its course did it touch the ravine curving along near by it once, six miles from the ferry-landing, where, on the limbs of a cluster of giant cottonwoods that grew in the bottom of the gully, a score of Indian dead were lashed, their tobacco-pipes, jerked beef and guns under the blanket wrappings that hid them; and, again, at Murphy's Throat, four miles farther up, where the coulée narrowed until a man, standing in its bed with arms outstretched, could place the tips of his fingers against either rocky wall.
"If you wished it, yes," he said. "I almost believe," he heard, as if she were speaking the words to herself. She turned to him again, and something of faith, of hope transfigured her face. "Return to your fire and your prunes," she said quickly, and the sunlight of a smile passed over her lips. "Then, half an hour from now, come up the coulee to the turn in the rocks. You will find me there."
He was hungry, and his lunch was tied to his saddle. He looked eagerly down the coulee, in the faint hope of seeing his horse grazing somewhere along its length, until the numbness of his arms and hands reminded him that forty lunches, tied upon forty saddles at his side, would be of no use to him in his present position.
Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown, undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign of motion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky. Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," she said in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coulée, southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest.
Here they advanced slowly and cautiously, taking care to be on the side where the wind would favor them most, and once in a while Alex still dropped down to the foot of the coulée in search of sign or feeding-ground.
From the direction of the coulee came the sound of horses' hoofs pounding the trail! Bat Lajune grinned into the dark as the galloping cow-horse carried Endicott out upon the trail of Purdy and the girl. "A'm t'ink dat wan good job. Mebbe-so de pilgrim keel Purdy, bien! Mebbe-so Purdy keel de pilgrim, den de sheriff ketch Purdy an' she got for git hang dat pret' good, too.
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