The Shot In The Pass

Dicksie walked hurriedly through the dining-room and out upon the rear porch. Her horse was standing where she had left him. Her heart beat furiously as she caught up the reins, but she sprang into the saddle and rode rapidly away. The flood of her temper had brought a disregard of consequence: it was in the glow of her eyes, the lines of her lips, and the tremor of her nostrils as she breathed long and deeply on her flying horse.

When she checked Jim she had ridden miles, but not without a course nor without a purpose. Where the roads ahead of her parted to lead down the river and over the Elbow Pass to Medicine Bend, she halted within a clump of trees almost where she had first seen McCloud. Beyond the Mission Mountains the sun was setting in a fire like that which glowed under her eyes. She could have counted her heart-beats as the crimson ball sank below the verge of the horizon and the shadows threw up the silver thread of the big river and deepened across the heavy green of the alfalfa fields. Where Dicksie sat, struggling with her bounding pulse and holding Jim tightly in, no one from the ranch or, indeed, from the up-country could pass her unseen. She was waiting for a horseman, and the sun had set but a few minutes when she heard a sharp gallop coming down the upper road from the hills.