e'd protect you to the best of ability, o' course; but you can see for
yourself that Hyrum won't feel none too kindly toward you, and that if
you'll pull out along with Beeson as soon as convenient you'll avoid a
heap of unpleasantness. We'll take the chance on sneakin' you both away,
and facin' the old man."

"Mr. Beeson should go," she said. "But I shall return to the Adams camp. I
am not afraid, sir."

"Tut, tut!" he rapped. "I know you're not afraid; nevertheless we won't
let you do it."

"They wouldn't lay hands on me."

"Um-m," he mused. "Mebbe not. No, reckon they wouldn't. I'll say that
much. But by thunder they'd make you wish they did. They'd claim you
trapped Dan'l. You'd suffer for that, and in place of this boy, and
a-plenty. Better foller your new man, lady, and let him stow you in
safety. Better go back to Benton."

"Never to Benton," she declared. "And he's not my 'new man.' I apologize
to him for that, from you, sir."

"If you stay, I stay, then," said I. "But I think we'd best go. It's the
only way." And it was. We were twain in menace to the outfit and to each
other but inseparable. We were yoked. The fact appalled. It gripped me
coldly. I seemed to have bargained for her with word and fist and bullet,
and won her; now I should appear to carry her off as my booty: a wife and
a gambler's wife. Yet such must be.

"You shall go without me."

"I shall not."

With a little sob she buried her face in her hands.

"If you don't hate me now you soon will," she uttered. "The cards don't
fall right--they don't, they don't. They've been against me from the
first. I'm always forcing the play."

Whereupon I knew that go together we should, or I was no man.

"Pshaw, pshaw," Jenks soothed. "Matters ain't so bad. We'll fix ye out and
cover your trail. Moon'll be up in a couple o' hours. I'd advise you to
take an hour's start of it, so as to get away easier. If you travel
straight south'ard you'll strike the stage road sometime in the mornin'.
When you reach a station you'll have ch'ice either way."

"I have money," she said; and sat erect.

CHAPTER XVIII

VOICES IN THE VOID

The directions had been plain. With the North Star and the moon as our
guides we scarcely could fail to strike the stage road where it bore off
from the mountains northward into the desert.

For the first half mile we rode without a word from either of us to
violate the truce that swathed us like the night. What her t