The night lay silent and mysterious over the Divide. He stood listening. The girl had started only an hour before, and it was unlikely that she could have traversed more than two miles of the steep trail in that time. He could fancy her toiling ever upward, somewhere on the dark ridge that lay beyond. Although the horse ordinarily did not climb a hill more swiftly than a human being, he did n't doubt but that he could overtake her before she went three miles farther. But where lay his duty,—with the injured man in the house or with the daughter on her errand of mercy in the darkness?
Then the matter was decided for him. So faint that it only whispered at the dim, outer frontiers of hearing, a sound came pricking through the darkness. Only his months of listening to the faint sounds of the forest, and the incredible silence of the night enabled him to hear it at all. But he knew what it was, the report of a pistol. Snowbird had met an enemy in the darkness.
He called once to Lennox, snatched the shotgun that still stood where he had placed it in the corner of the room, and hastened to the corral. The mare whickered plaintively when he took her from her food.
