Dinsmore To The Rescue

If 'Mona lives to be eighty the high-lights of that wild ride will never fade from her memory. The mesas rolled in long swells as far as the eye could see. Through the chaparral the galloping horses plunged while the prickly pear and the cholla clutched at their flanks and at the legs of the riders. Into water-gutted arroyos they descended, slid down breakneck shale ridges, climbed like heather cats the banks of dry washes, pounded over white porous malpais on which no vegetation grew.

Now Dinsmore was in front of her picking out the best way, now he was beside her with cool, easy words of confidence, now he rode between her and the naked Apaches, firing with deliberate and deadly accuracy.

"Don't look back," he warned her more than once. "My job is to look out for them. Yours is to see yore horse don't throw you or break a leg in a prairie-dog hole. They cayn't outrun us. Don't worry about that."

The man was so easy in manner, apparently so equal to the occasion, that as the miles slid behind them her panic vanished. She felt for the small revolver in her belt to make sure it was safe. If she should be thrown, or if her horse should be shot, one thing must be done instantly. She must send a bullet crashing into her brain.

To the right and to the left of her jets of dirt spat up where the shots of the Indians struck the ground. Once or twice she looked back, but the sight of the bareback riders at their heels so unnerved her that she obeyed the orders of her companion and resisted the dreadful fascination of turning in her saddle.