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CHAPTER XIV. 'TWIXT LOVE AND DUTY

FOR an hour Barbara Harding paced the veranda of the ranchhouse, pride and

love battling for the ascendency within her breast. She could not let him die, that

she knew; but how might she save him?

The strains of music and the laughter from the bunkhouse had ceased. The

ranch slept. Over the brow of the low bluff upon the opposite side of the river a

little party of silent horsemen filed downward to the ford. At the bluff's foot a

barbed-wire fence marked the eastern boundary of the ranch's enclosed fields.

The foremost horseman dismounted and cut the strands of wire, carrying them to

one side from the path of the feet of the horses which now passed through the

opening he had made.

Down into the river they rode following the ford even in the darkness with an

assurance which indicated long familiarity. Then through a fringe of willows out

across a meadow toward the ranch buildings the riders made their way. The

manner of their approach, their utter silence, the hour, all contributed toward the

sinister.

Upon the veranda of the ranchhouse Barbara Harding came to a sudden halt. Her

entire manner indicated final decision, and determination. A moment she stood in

thought and then ran quickly down the steps and in the direction of the office.

Here she found Eddie dozing at his post. She did not disturb him. A glance

through the window satisfied her that he was alone with the prisoner. From the

office building Barbara passed on to the corral. A few horses stood within the

enclosure, their heads drooping dejectedly. As she entered they raised their

muzzles and sniffed suspiciously, ears a-cock, and as the girl approached closer

to them they moved warily away, snorting, and passed around her to the opposite

side of the corral. As they moved by her she scrutinized them and her heart

dropped, for Brazos was not among them. He must have been turned out into the

pasture.

She passed over to the bars that closed the opening from the corral into the

pasture and wormed her way between two of them. A hackamore with a piece of

halter rope attached to it hung across the upper bar. Taking it down she moved

off across the pasture in the direction the saddle horses most often took when

liberated from the corral.

If they had not crossed the river she felt that she might find and catch Brazos, for

lumps of sugar and bits of bread had inspired in his equine soul a wondrous

attachment for his temporary mistress.

263

The Mucker