a big bay
gelding. As it drew abreast of Garrison, standing motionless in the
white road, it shied. Its rider rocketed over its head, thudded on the
ground, heaved once or twice, and then lay very still. The horse swept
on. As it passed, Garrison swung beside it, caught its pace for an
instant, and then eased himself into the saddle. Then he bent over and
rode as only he could ride. It was a runaway handicap. Sue's life was
the stake, and the odds were against him.

CHAPTER XI.

SUE DECLARES HER LOVE.

It was Waterbury who was lying unconscious on the lonely Logan Pike;
Waterbury who had been thrown as the bay gelding strove desperately to
overhaul the flying runaway filly.

Sue had gone for an evening ride. She wished to be alone. It had been
impossible to lose the ubiquitous Mr. Waterbury, but this evening The
Rogue had evinced premonitory symptoms of a distemper, and the greatly
exercised colonel had induced the turfman to ride over and have a look
at him. This left Sue absolutely unfettered, the first occasion in a
week.

She was of the kind who fought out trouble silently, but not placidly.
She must have something to contend against; something on which to
work out the distemper of a heart and mind not in harmony. She must
experience physical exhaustion before resignation came. In learning a
lesson she could not remain inactive. She must walk, walk, up and down,
up an down, until its moral or text was beaten into her mentality with
her echoing footsteps.

On this occasion she was in the humor to dare the impossible; dare
through sheer irritability of heart--not mind. And so she saddled
Lethe--an unregenerate pinto of the Southern Trail, whose concealed
devilishness forcibly reminded one of Balzac's famous description: "A
clenched fist hidden in an empty sleeve."

She had been forbidden to ride the pinto ever since the day it was
brought home to her with irrefutable emphasis that the shortest distance
between two points is a straight line. It was more of a parabola she
described, when, bucked off, her head smashed the ground, but the simile
serves.

But she would ride Lethe to-night. The other horses were too
comfortable. They served to irritate the bandit passions, not to subdue
them. She panted for some one, something, to break to her will.

Lethe felt that there was a passion that night riding her; a passion
that far surpassed her own. Womanlike, she decided to arbitrate. She
would wait until thi