southern mouth of the pass through the thickening twilight. Stars began to come out. There would be a moon waiting for them by the time they emerged from the canyon. The land sloped gently upwards and, when they struck the road, they drew rein, gazing back along the grey ribbon of highway to where the scant lights of Metzal showed. There was no sign of the surprise party, no sound but the surge of Ghost Creek, confined to a rocky bed, sharing the gap with the wagon-road and the railway, crowding the latter sometimes to a manufactured bed hewn from the cliff.
Relieved, for it had been hard to guess at what moment the determination of Hollister and his roisterers might crystallize into action, they set their breathed horses north, going fast and even, the mare springy on her delicate pasterns, the heavier roan forging along with a powerful clumsiness more apparent than real.
Sheridan found himself more than merely anxious to reach the women on Ghost Mountain and stave off the crudities of the drunken gang from Metzal. The girl held his thoughts with an intensity that he wondered at, now and then, as he conjured up what she might look like, how she might act. It was three years since he had been on terms of intimacy with any woman, as long since he had spoken with one of his own rank—by which he meant one who had had the same opportunities of culture, education, habit of thought, manner and speech.
Sheridan liked to think himself essentially a
