She was unhurt, a little muddy from the newly wetted garden soil, but otherwise as sound as when she began the descent. She now turned straight across the garden to the barn. There the mare, Nancy, whinnied a greeting and rubbed a soft muzzle against her cheek. The girl cast her arms around the neck of the horse and hugged the familiar head close to her. Here, at least, was one true friend in a world of enemies!
The saddling was a slow process, for every now and then she had to stop to listen to the noises in the barn, little creaking sounds as the horses stirred on the wooden floor, and very like the noise of men approaching stealthily to seize her.
At last the saddle was on, and she led Nancy out the back door of the barn, let down the bars, and stepped onto the muffling grass of the field beyond; then into the saddle, trembling when the leather stirrup creaked under her weight in mounting; then down the hollow, fearful lest one of the horses in the neighboring corrals might neigh and bring an answer from Nancy.
But there was not a sound. Now, looking back, the house on the hill was huge and black, and Mary Hood wondered how she could ever have been happy in it, but she had hardly drawn one great breath of relief when the deep night of the trees closed over her. She had ridden through those trees a hundred times before at night, but always in company with others, and now they were changed and strange, and the solemn, small noises of the night were before and behind her.
The little bay mare went daintily and wisely. She knew every nook and cranny of that wood. Every stump and tree and every root that worked up out of the ground was familiar. Once or twice a twig snapped under her foot, but on the whole she kept to the noiseless ground.
Mary Hood let the horse go as she would. Her way led north. That she knew and little else, for she had heard a rumor that Pete Reeve and Bull Hunter were in the Tompson Mountains. And since the mare had chosen that way by instinct it began to seem that her ride was fated to succeed. Moreover, the wind of the galloping exhilarated her, and the darkness was no longer complete. Instead, the stars burned closer and closer to her through the thin mountain air.
To reach the Tompsons required a two days’ journey, and she remembered now with a start that she had taken no provisions with her. Neither had she more than touched her supper that night. She gathered the reins to turn back, but at this moment Nancy shied from a white stone and doubled her speed straight north. All people in danger are superstitious, and Mary Hood took that little incident, coming when it did, as a sign from Heaven that she must not double back.
The stars were beginning to fade when she reached the first foothills, and by sunrise she was among the upper peaks, desperately hungry and with an ache at the base of her brain from lack of sleep. Nancy, too, was very tired. She plodded willingly on, but her head was neither so proud nor so high. She had ceased thinking for herself, and like every tired horse was surrendering her destiny into the hands of the rider.
At the first small stream they reached, a tiny trickle of spring water, the girl dismounted and bathed her face and throat and let Nancy drink a little and nibble some of the grass near the water. Then she went on again, greatly refreshed. Her sleepiness grew less now that the sun was bright, and with that brightness her chances of success seemed far greater.
But before very long she knew she was coming into a district crossed by many riders, and it would be far wiser for her to lie low until late afternoon or even until the evening. Looking about her for a shelter, she found a grove of aspens, with their leaves flashing silver when the wind struck them and a continual shiver of whispers passing through the trees. So she rode Nancy into the middle of the little wood, unsaddled her, and tied her on a long rope to graze or lie down as she pleased.
For her part, she found the deepest shadow, unrolled her blankets, and was instantly asleep.
When she wakened she was lying in a patch of yellow light; a branch snapping under the hoof of Nancy as she grazed had wakened her. Mary Hood sat up, bewildered. She had fallen asleep at about ten in the morning. It was now fully six in the evening, and the sun would be down very shortly. She had been sleeping cold for the last hour perhaps, and the rising sound of the wind promised her a chilly night indeed.
She went methodically and mechanically about her preparations for the night ride, feeling more and more the folly of this journey to an unknown end. First she looked anxiously to Nancy, examining her hoofs, looking her over with minute care, while Nancy followed her mistress about and seemed, with her sniffling nose, to have joined the inquiry. But Nancy seemed perfectly sound. And that was the most important thing just now. That, and the fact that her stomach was crying for food.
Mary was so hungry that her hand shook when she saddled the mare. She mounted and rode out of the wood. She had barely reached the open, however, when she whipped Nancy around and back into cover. Over a near-by hill jogged half a dozen horsemen, and at their head she recognized the formidable figure of Hal Dunbar.
Her first impulse was to give Nancy the spur and ride as fast and as far as she could away from the pursuers. But she was already out of the country with which she was thoroughly familiar, and she felt that even though she outdistanced the horses behind her she would eventually be caught in a long chase. Certainly Hal Dunbar would not spare money or horseflesh to catch her.
She followed a second and really braver impulse. She tethered Nancy in the center of the wood and crept back on her hands and knees, literally, to the edge of the copse. There she lay in covert and watched the coming of the horsemen. Her father was not among them, by which she was given to understand that he had taken other groups of men to hunt in different directions. But the rat-faced Riley, the close lieutenant and evil genius of Hal Dunbar, was among those who now brought their horses from a lope to a stand not twenty yards away.
It seemed to the girl that when once any pair of those keen eyes turned in her direction they would pierce through her screen of leaves and reveal her. But though many eyes turned that way, and she shrank in mortal fear each time, no one came closer.
“You see it’s what I told you,” Hal Dunbar was saying. “She didn’t come this way, and if she did she’d have ridden a lot farther. That would be her instinct, to jump on Nancy and ride like mad until the mare dropped. No sense in a woman. She wouldn’t have the brains to cache herself away for the day and start on again at night.”
The girl smiled faintly to herself.
“You’re the boss,” said Riley sullenly. “But I think she’s got more brains that you credit her with, and if I was you, I’d search every hollow and cave and clump of trees and old shack you can find right about in here. This is the distance she most likely went if she stopped a little after it was full day. If I was you, I’d begin and hunt through that bunch of aspens.”
“All right, go ahead and search through ‘em.”
Mary Hood cast a frantic glance back toward Nancy. She could reach the horse in time to spur on ahead of the pursuers, but she found suddenly that fear had stolen the strength from her body, and a leaden heart weighed her down.
“Wait a minute,” called Hal Dunbar as Riley started toward the trees. “No use doing fool things like that. We’ll ride for White Pine to-night. That’ll be a good starting place for us to-morrow. No, I’ll go to White Pine. Riley, you’d better take the trail to the Hollow. And, remember, you and the rest of the boys, when you see her, go out and get her. If you have to be rough, be rough. If you can’t stop her without dropping her horse, shoot! I’ll be responsible if any danger happens to the girl in the fall. But I’m not going to have that ungrateful slip get away from me. Understand?”