as Judas.

I looked down at the humble giant, shamefaced in the moonlight, tying
his broken bridle reins back in their rings, and drawing the knots tight
with his bronzed fingers that looked like the coupling-pins of a
cart,--and then at the hunchback doubled up in his saddle. Maybe,--and
my blood began to rise with it,--maybe when we looked close, the odds
were not so terrible after all. Here was bone and sinew tougher than
Malan's, and such cunning as might cry Marks a merrier run than he had
gone for many a day.

Then, as by some sharp turn, I caught a new light on the two hours
already gone. Man alive! We had been in the game for all of those two
blessed hours with our eyes sealed up tight as the lid of a jar.

"How high was the Gauley?" I almost shouted, pointing my finger at Red
Mike.

"'Mid sides," answered Jourdan, turning around in his saddle.

"'Mid sides!" I echoed; "and the logs? Was it running logs?"

"Nothin' but brush an' a few old rails. You can see the water mark on
Red Mike right here at the bottom of the saddle skirt." And the old man
reached down and put his finger on the smoking horse. "The Gauley ain't
up to stop nothin'."

I clapped my teeth together. So much for the solicitous care of Hawk
Rufe. If we had gone by the Hacker's Creek road we should have missed
Jourdan and lost the good half of a day. Woodford knew that Ward would
send by the shortest road. It was the first gleam of the wolf tooth
shining for a moment behind the woolly face of the sheepskin.

I looked down at Ump. The hunchback put his elbow on the horn of his
saddle and rested his jaw in the hollow of his hand.

"Old Granny Lanum," he said, "her that's buried back on the Dolan Knob,
used to say that God saw for the little pup when it was blind, but after
that it was the little pup's business. An' I reckon she knowed what she
said."

Wiser heads than mine have pondered that problem since the world began
its swinging,--but with greater elegance, but scarcely more clearly than
Ump had put it. Old Liza used to tell me when I was very little that if
I fought with those who were smaller than myself, I was fighting the
wards of the Father in heaven, and it was a lot better to get a broken
head from some sturdy urchin who was big enough to look out for himself.
And I have always thought that old Liza was about as close to the Ruler
of Events as any one of us is likely to get. Anyway I doubted not that
if the good God rode in th