And so it happened that Richard Bellamy, walking at the head of his herd,
saw a horse gallop wildly round a bend almost into his bleating flock. The
rider dragged the bronco to a halt and slipped to the ground. She stood
there ashen-hued, clinging to the saddle-horn and swaying slightly.
"I'm in time.... Thank God!... Thank God!" her parched lips murmured.
"Miss Lee! You here?" he cried.
They looked at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in
her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots,
his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power
of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad,
flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of
blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The
still force of him somehow carried reassurance to her. Such virility of
manhood could not be marked for extinction.
She panted out her story, and his eyes never left her.
"You have risked your life to save mine and my herders," he said very
quietly.
"You must go back," she replied irrelevantly.
"I can't. The entrance is guarded."
This startled her. "Then--what shall we do?"
"You must ride forward at once. Tell the vaqueros that I am moving my
sheep only to take them to the railroad. Explain to them how Alan is
detained with the message I sent Farnum. In a few minutes we shall follow
with the sheep."
"And if they don't believe that you are going out of the sheep
business--what then?"
"I shall have to take my chance of that."
She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind, nodded, swung to the
saddle, and rode forward. After a few minutes Bellamy followed slowly. He
was unarmed, not having doubted that his letter to the cattleman would
make his journey safe. That he should have waited for an answer was now
plain, but the contract called for an immediate delivery of the sheep, as
he had carefully explained in his note to Farnum.
Presently he heard again the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the loose shale
and saw Melissy returning.
"Well?" he asked as she drew up.
"I've told them. I think they believe me, but I'm going through the gorge
with you."
He looked up quickly to protest, but did not. He knew that her thought was
that her presence beside him would protect him from attack. The rough
chivalry of Arizona takes its hat off to a woman, and Melissy Lee was a
favorite of the whole countryside.