when it was down, the room was found to be as empty as the first. But the fingers of two hands gripping the edge of the veranda roof showed the way the fugitives had flown, and these vanished instantly as the room was invaded.
Followed a swift rush of hoofs down the dusty street and a chorus of blasphemy in the hotel hallway, for Judith had headed the rush for the staircase and contrived to block it for a full half-minute by pretending to stumble and twist her ankle. In spite of that alleged injury, she never limped, and wasn't a yard behind the first who broke from the hotel, nor yet appreciably behind in vaulting to saddle.
Well up the road a cloud of dust half obscured the shapes of three who rode for their lives. The pursuit was off in a twinkling and well bunched, Marrophat's mount leading by a nose, Judith second, Hopi Jim and Texas but little in the rear. Then that happened which brought Judith's heart into her mouth. The foremost of the horses ridden by the three in flight stumbled and fell in such wise that its rider must have been crushed but for miraculous luck and agility.
Just then a puff of wind whipped the curtain of dust aside and showed the figure of a woman standing in the roadway a few feet distant from the fallen horse—Rose, who had somehow managed to fall upon her feet, waiting with a bright face of confidence
