ngle it climbed steadily upward to the very top of the mountain.
In places weatherworn to a slippery smoothness; in others jagged,
fragment-strewn; where the rain had washed an earth-covering upon the
rock the cheerful kinnikinick spread its mantle of shining green.

The man and the girl and the horse made good time. Racey's feet began
to hurt before he had gone a mile, but he knew that something besides
a pair of feet would be irreparably damaged if he did not keep going.
If they caught him he would be lynched, that's what he would be. If he
weren't shot first. And the girl--well, she would get at the least ten
years at Piegan City, _if_ they were caught. But "if" is the longest
and tallest word in the dictionary. It is indeed a mighty barrier
before the Lord.

"Did you ever stop to think they may come up through this brush?" said
Molly, on whom the silence and the sad gray stubs on either hand were
beginning to tell.

"No," he answered, "I didn't, because they can't. The farther down you
go the worse it gets. They'd never get through. Not with hosses. We're
all right."

"Are we?" She stood up in her stirrups, and looked down through a
vista between the stubs.

They had reached the top of the mountain. It was a saddle-backed
mountain, and they were at the outer edge of the eastern hump. Far
below was a narrow valley running north and south. It was a valley
without trees or stream and through it a string of dots were slipping
to the north.

"Are we all right?" she persisted. "Look down there."

At this he turned his head and craned his neck.

"I guess," he said, stepping out, "we'd better boil this kettle a li'l
faster."

She made no comment, but always she looked down the mountain side and
watched, when the stubs gave her the opportunity, that ominous string
of dots. She had never been hunted before.

They crossed the top of the mountain, keeping to the ridge of rock,
and started down the northern slope. Here they passed out of the
burned-over area of underbrush and stubs and scuffed through brushless
groves of fir and spruce where no grass grew and not a ray of sunshine
struck the ground and the wind soughed always mournfully.

But here and there were comparatively open spaces, grassy, drenched
with sunshine, and sparsely sprinkled with lovely mountain maples and
solitary yellow pines. In the wider open spaces they could see over
the tops of the trees below them and catch glimpses of the way they
must g