The Golden Woman

But the horse from the other direction had slackened speed too. His rider, too, had reduced his gait to a walk.

The birds overhead ceased their preening and looked below for the possible development they seem to be ever awaiting. It makes no difference, they follow the trail of all animal life, waiting, waiting, with a patience inexhaustible, for the moment of stillness which tells them that life has passed and the banquet awaits them.

One of the horsemen came into full view from the height above. The second horseman appeared round a bend. Both men were mounted on the lean, hard-muscled horses of prairie breeding. They were spare of flesh and uncared for, but their muscles were hard and their legs clean. Between them a bend in the trail still intervened, but with each moment they were drawing nearer to each other.

Right under the tree upon which the crows were perched Pete drew rein and sat listening to the shuffling gait of the oncoming horse. The man's lean face was dark with a brooding hatred. His eyes were fiercely alight with expectancy. A revolver lay across his thigh, the butt of it firmly grasped in a hand clutching it with desperate purpose.

The trail was the trail to the farm. Ike had gone to the farm. A horseman was returning along that trail from the direction of the farm. Such was the argument behind his aggressive action. It was a simple argument which in his sober senses might have needed support to urge him to the course he now contemplated. But he was not sober; Beasley had seen to that. He was no more sober than was Ike.

Ike's horse was moving slowly--much slower than its usual walking gait The man was craning forward. Who, he wondered, was riding toward the farm, and for what purpose? His right hand was on the butt of his revolver, but his weapon was still in its holster, for his action was purely precautionary in a country where, when a man has enemies, or has done those things which he knows his fellows resent, it is advisable to look for no support outside his own ability to defend himself.

He remembered the screams of Joan, and he knew how the hills echoed. He wondered, and wondering he regretted something of what he had done. But he regretted it only for possible consequences to himself. In reality he reveled in the warm memory of the feel of the girl's soft cheek.

His horse reached the bend. He could no longer hear the hoof-beats of the other. He drew up with a sudden, nervous movement, and his gun left its holster. But his nerves passed, and, with a foul oath, he urged his horse forward. He rounded the bend and came face to face with the figure of Blue Grass Pete.