he was not more than two hundred yards
ahead of him now, she did not seem to hear. In a moment she turned the
base of a great rock, and there he lost her.

The valley split a few rods beyond that point, broadening a little,
still set with its fantastic black monuments of splintered rock. It was
impossible to see among them in either direction as far as Grace had
been in the lead when she passed out of his sight. He pulled up and
shouted again, an appeal of tender concern in her name. There was no
reply, no sound of her fleeing horse.

He leaned to look at the ground for tracks. No trace of her passing on
the hard earth with its mangy growth of grass. On a little way, stopping
to call her once more. His voice went echoing in that quiet place, but
there was no reply.

He turned back, thinking she must have gone down the other branch of the
valley. Whetstone came to a sudden stop, lifted his head with a jerk,
his ears set forward, snorting an alarm. Quick on his action there came
a shot, close at hand. Whetstone started with a quivering bound,
stumbled to his knees, struggled to rise, then floundered with piteous
groans.

CHAPTER XXIII

UNMASKED

Lambert was out of the saddle at the sound of the shot. He sprang to the
shelter of the nearest rock, gun in hand, thinking with a sweep of
bitterness that Grace Kerr had led him into a trap. Whetstone was lying
still, his chin on the ground, one foreleg bent and gathered under him,
not in the posture of a dead horse, although Lambert knew that he was
dead. It was as if the brave beast struggled even after life to picture
the quality of his unconquerable will, and would not lie in death as
other horses lay, cold and inexpressive of anything but death, with
stiff limbs straight.

Lambert was incautious of his own safety in his great concern for his
horse. He stepped clear of his shelter to look at him, hoping against
his conviction that he would rise. Somebody laughed behind the rock on
his right, a laugh that plucked his heart up and cast it down, as a
drunken hand shatters a goblet upon the floor.

"I guess you'll never race me on _that_ horse again, fence-rider!"

There was the sound of movement behind the rock; in a moment Grace Kerr
rode out from her concealment, not more than four rods beyond the place
where his horse lay. She rode out boldly and indifferently before his
eyes, turned and looked back at him, her face white as an evening
primrose in the dusk