breeze there came to them a rumor of drumming hoofs, so faint that only a trained ear could register the sound.
'Yore anxious friends aren't losing any time,' Hal mentioned to his prisoner.
'What's the sense in taking me with you?' Mullins wanted to know fretfully. 'Why don't you take the horse and let me hoof it back?'
'I wouldn't desert you after all we've been through,' his captor told him with gentle irony. 'Question before the house is, Do we follow this arroyo or keep going straight ahead?'
'We'll get lost, whichever we do,' Mullins prophesied sourly.
'So we may,' Hal agreed. 'But we'll have each other for company. The arroyo wins. Right face.'
The bed of the ravine became a thicket of yucca, mesquite, cholla, and bisnaga. Hal mounted behind the hill man, to protect his legs from the thorns snatching at them.
The pony picked its way along the line of least resistance with the sure instinct of a horse trained in brush country, and after a few minutes came to a canon with high perpendicular walls. The darkness was almost impenetrable. Far above was a narrow ribbon of star-dotted sky, but the light did not reach the floor of the gorge along which they were feeling their way.
A cleft opened in the left wall, a narrow gulch down which in floodtime water must have poured for thousands of years. Whether it was possible to get out of the gorge by this steep stairway, they could find out only by trying.
Hal cocked an inquiring eye at his companion. 'How would you like to be a human fly, Mr. Mullins?' he asked.
Mullins declined emphatically. 'I'm not going up there. A mountain goat couldn't make it.'
'Now — now, that's not the spirit,' Hal chided. 'In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as can't. Remember how Hannibal crossed the Alps — and Caesar the Rubicon.'
His captive looked at him angrily. 'You're crazy as a hoot owl. I don't want to break my neck, if you do.'
Yet a minute later the cowpony, with Mullins on its back, was scrambling up the defile. Hal led the way on foot, to help with suggestions at the more difficult bits. The gorge was strewn with rubble that offered bad footing and in places big boulders filled the floor. The roan stumbled, slipped, slithered down, found its feet, and pressed forward with catlike sureness.
They came to a trough so steep that Hal hesitated to try it, but just above this the way eased gently to the summit.
'Told you we couldn't make it,' Mullins exulted. 'But of course it had to be your way. Nothing you don't know.'
'We'll have to give the horse some help,' Hal said, after studying the situation. He untied the rope that bound the feet of his prisoner and put the loop around the neck of the roan. 'I'll go ahead with the rope far as that rock outcrop, you come next with the bridle coaxing the horse up the trough.'
Mullins refused bitterly to join in the attempt. 'You're fixing to get us both killed. I'm going back.'
'No,' Hal told him firmly. 'You're going to the top if I have to rope you and drag you up.'
The horse balked, but after a time knifed its front hoofs into the ground and plunged forward. More than once it refused to try the precipitous slope. Mullins petted and soothed the animal till it was ready for another rush. How they got it to the rock outcrop where there was solid ground for standing was a marvel. From there the rise was more gradual. They hauled, encouraged, and bullied the roan to the summit.
Mullins wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve. 'If I ever tell the boys I brought a horse up there, I'll be called a liar for the rest of my life,' he said.
It was lighter on the plateau. While they waited to rest, Hal noticed the ground sloped to the south. A stand of junipers covered the mesa, but there was little small brush. Before they reached the yonder side of the high land, the gray light of dawn was beginning to sift into the sky. In front of them were cowbacked hills with wide draws between. The M K rancher recognized this country.
If they kept going, the coming day would show them the range where his cattle fed. They descended a slope sown with a thin stand of Spanish bayonet and climbed the hill beyond.
'Home soon,' Hal said cheerfully. 'We've earned a first-class breakfast.'
His companion growled resentfully. He guessed that an ordeal was ahead of him. Stevens intended to break his resistance and make him talk.
They dipped into another draw and moved up the opposite incline. Day was breaking clear, and they could see the blades of the M K windmill whirling in the breeze.
Hal gave an exclamation of annoyance. In the valley below them a man stood holding a bunch of saddled horses. One of the dismounted riders was lying back of a clump of bushes watching the ranch house. The outlaws had cut him off from his friends. When he glanced at Mullins, he saw a sly pleased smile vanishing from the man's face.
'Looks like your luck has run out,' the rustler said.
Stevens caught the bridle rein and moved the horse back of the hill crest. 'I'll have to give you a raincheck on that breakfast,' he told his prisoner. 'We're traveling again.'
'Where?' asked Mullins.
'Away from here,' Hal answered.
He knew this part of the country as a teacher does her textbook. In and out among the low hills he took Mullins and brought him at last down Frenchy's Draw to the valley.
'You're headin' for the Seven Up,' the outlaw said.
'Yes.'
'But the boys will see us crossing the pasture.'
'They may. We'll leave the horse in the arroyo and cut across on foot. Maybe they won't notice us.'
'You can't do that to me!' Mullins cried. 'I'm not going.
Of course they would see us — and pick us off with rifles. They wouldn't know me from you.'
Hal said quietly, 'We'll go together.'
There was a cold, hard light in his eyes that chilled the hill man. In his will was a driving force not to be denied. His reckless feet had carried him on many a dangerous trail. Mullins knew that this was one he had to take with him.
When they emerged from the draw, the eyes of both men swept the ridge to the north. No sign of the enemy could be seen there. But before they had covered a hundred yards of the meadow, several horsemen sat in silhouette against the skyline. Mullins gave a yelp of alarm and began to run. He had not gone a dozen steps when the riders started down the hill toward them.
Hal's guess was that they would be caught before they could reach the ranch house. As he ran, he fired twice into the air, in the hope of drawing the attention of somebody at the Seven Up to their predicament. The distance to the hill below the house was probably a mile and a half. The riders would come in through the north gate and cut diagonally across in front of them. He looked over his shoulder and saw that they were already pouring through the opening in the barbed wire fence. Soon bullets would begin to throw up spits of dirt in front of and behind them.
DALE'S restless gaze wandered from the mountain spikes of Rabbit Ear, down the torn hill country to the M K ranch, and swept the valley at her feet. She had risen from a night of wakefulness and troubled dreams due to anxiety on account of Hal Stevens. For nearly three days he had been missing. His friends had hoped that he would return with Sheriff Elbert's posse, but it had come back yesterday afternoon with no news of him and without any of the men wanted by the law.
Casey joined her in front of the house. He knew that she was greatly worried. Since he liked and admired Hal, his mind too was disturbed. But he did not let this doubt reach the surface.
'Stevens will turn up all right,' he assured her. 'He has more lives than a cat. Don't you fret, Miss Dale. That young man will come in grinning when he is ready.'
'He's up there somewhere in the Rabbit Ear country,' she said, her harassed eyes shuttling back to the hills.
