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"You're taking steep chances if you go on." Courthorne swung off from the trail. There was a flash above him, something whirred through the twigs above his head, and the horse plunged as he drove his heels in.
Courthorne, Winston fancied, shifted one foot from the stirrup, but then sat still as the farmer held his hand for the girl to mount by, while when she rode away he looked at his companion with a trace of anger as well as irony in his eyes. "Yes," said Winston. "What you heard was correct. Miss Barrington's horse fell lame coming from one of the farms, which accounts for her passing here so late.
"I should very much prefer not to, my dear, but what we saw the other night appears to give it probability. The man Courthorne was dismissing somewhat summarily is, I believe, to marry the lady in question. You will remember I asked you once before whether the leopard can change his spots." The girl laughed a little.
The others had their backs to the girl, and by the time one or two of them turned round she was quietly helping Courthorne's companion; but it was a moment or two before Courthorne commenced to eat, for the waitress was certainly Ailly Blake.
It was evening before he returned, and found Courthorne lying in a big chair with a cigar in his hand, languidly debonair but apparently ill. His face was curiously pallid, and his eyes dimmer than they had been, but there was a sardonic twinkle in them. "You take a look at the decanter," said the man, who went up with Winston, carrying a lamp.
Courthorne was outside by this time, and only those who reached the door before Dane closed it heard a faint beat of hoofs as somebody rode quietly away beneath the bluff, while as the rest clustered together, wondering, a minute or two later, Corporal Payne, flecked with spume and covered with dust, came in.
"Yes," said the lad from Ontario, "I was driving in for the stores when I met him in the willow bluff, an' Courthorne pulls his divil of a black horse up with as little ugly smile on the lips of him when I swung the wagon right across the trail. "'That's not civil, trooper, says he. "'I'm wanting a word, says I, with the black hate choking me at the sight of him. 'What have ye done with Ailly?
"I guess you have heard of me. Any way, there are a good many places in Montana where they know Lance Courthorne. Quite sure I know a straight game when I see it!" The man's resistance vanished, but he had evidently been taught the necessity of making the best of defeat in his profession, and he laughed as he swept his glance around at the angry faces turned upon him.
Shannon quivered a moment, and then lay very still, and it was high time for Courthorne to look to himself, for there was a shouting in the bluff, and something came crashing through the undergrowth.
It was a long way to the ranch where he was to spend the night, and he knew that the further he drew the trooper on, the better it would suit Courthorne. So they swept on through the darkness over the empty waste, the trooper who was riding hard slowly creeping up behind.
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