Wyngate.
"Or fetched his own ambulance," said Briggs.
Nevertheless, after a pause, the wheels presently rolled away again.
"We'd better go and meet him at the gate," said Rice, hitching his
revolver holster nearer his hip. "That wagon stopped long enough to put
down three or four men."
They walked leisurely but silently to the gate. It is probable that none
of them believed in a serious collision, but now the prospect had enough
possibility in it to quicken their pulses. They reached the gate. But it
was still closed; the road beyond it empty.
"Mebbe they've sneaked round to the cabin," said Briggs, "and are
holdin' it inside."
They were turning quickly in that direction, when Wyngate said,
"Hush!--some one's there in the brush under the buckeyes."
They listened; there was a faint rustling in the shadows.
"Come out o' that, Brown--into the open. Don't be shy," called out Rice
in cheerful irony. "We're waitin' for ye."
But Briggs, who was nearest the wood, here suddenly uttered an
exclamation,--"B'gosh!" and fell back, open-mouthed, upon his
companions. They too, in another moment, broke into a feeble laugh, and
lapsed against each other in sheepish silence. For a very pretty girl,
handsomely dressed, swept out of the wood and advanced towards them.
Even at any time she would have been an enchanting vision to these men,
but in the glow of exercise and sparkle of anger she was bewildering.
Her wonderful hair, the color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from
her hat in her passage through the underbrush, and even as she swept
down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a hairpin into it with a
dexterous feminine hand.
The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells
alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip
showing her white teeth with her panting breath.
Rice was first to speak. "I beg--your pardon, Miss--I thought it was
Brown--you know," he stammered.
But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the culprit, curled her
short lip till it almost vanished in her scornful nostrils, drew her
|