Voila, it was beautiful--like nothing you ever saw. She shook her head so
innocent, and then told them like a child that they were wicked to chase
a girl. I could have kissed her feet. Thunder, how she fooled them! She
said, would they not search the house? She said all through me, on her
fingers and by signs. And I told them at once. But she told me something
else--that the girl had slipped out as the last man came in, had mounted
the chestnut, and would wait for me by the iron spring, a quarter of a
mile away. There was the danger that some one of the men knew the
finger-talk, so she told me this in signs mixed up with other sentences.

"Good! There was now but one thing--for me to get away. So I said,
laughing, to one of the men. 'Come, and we will look after the horses,
and the others can search the place with Hilton.' So we went out to where
the horses were tied to the railing, and led them away to the corral.

"Of course you will understand how I did it. I clapped a hand on his
mouth, put a pistol at his head, and gagged and tied him. Then I got my
Tophet, and away I went to the spring. The girl was waiting. There were
few words. I gripped her hand, gave her another pistol, and then we got
away on a fine moonlit trail. We had not gone a mile when I heard a faint
yell far behind. My game had been found out. There was nothing to do but
to ride for it now, and maybe to fight. But fighting was not good; for I
might be killed, and then the girl would be caught just the same. We rode
on--such a ride, the horses neck and neck, their hoofs pounding the
prairie like drills, rawbone to rawbone, a hell-to-split gait. I knew
they were after us, though I saw them but once on the crest of a Divide
about three miles behind. Hour after hour like that, with ten minutes'
rest now and then at a spring or to stretch our legs. We hardly spoke to
each other; but, nom de Dieu! my heart was warm to this girl who had rode
a hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours. Just before dawn, when I