“What is it?” asked Molly in alarm at his expression.

“They picked up our trail somehow,” he answered, whipping up a blanket and saddle and throwing both on her horse.  “They’re about three miles back on the flat just a-burnin’ the ground.”

“Saddle your own horse,” she cried, running to his side.  “I’ll attend to mine.”

“You stuff all the papers back in the sack.  That’s yore job.  Hustle, now.  I’ll get you out of this.  Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying—­not a worry,” she said, cheerfully, both hands busy with Luke Tweezy’s papers.  “I’d like to know how they picked up the trail after our riding up that creek for six miles.”

“I dunno,” said he, his head under an upflung saddle-fender.  “I shore thought we’d lost ’em.”

She stopped tying the sack and looked at him.  “How silly we are!” she cried.  “All we have to do is show these two letters to the posse an’—­”

“S’pose now the posse is led by Jack Harpe and Jakey Pooley,” said he, not ceasing to pass the cinch strap.

Her face fell.  “I never thought of that,” she admitted.  “But there must be some honest men in the bunch.”

“It takes a whole lot to convince an honest man when he’s part of a posse,” Racey declared, reaching for the bran sack.  “They don’t stop to reason, a posse don’t, and this lot of Marysville gents wouldn’t give us time to explain these two letters, and before they got us back to town, the two letters would disappear, and then where would we be?  We’d be in jail, and like to stay awhile.”

“Let’s get out of here,” exclaimed Molly, crawling her horse even quicker than Racey did his.

Racey led the way along the mountain side for three or four miles.  Most of the time they rode at a gallop and all the time they took care to keep under cover of the trees.  This necessitated frequent zigzags, for the trees grew sparsely in spots.

“There’s a slide ahead a ways,” Racey shouted to the girl.  “She’s nearly a quarter-mile wide, and over two miles long, so we’ll have to take a chance and cross it.”

Molly nodded her wind-whipped head and Racey snatched a wistful glance at the face he loved.  Renunciation was in his eyes, for that second letter found caught in the bran sack’s seam had changed things.  He could not marry her.  No, not now.  And yet he loved her more than ever.  She looked at him and smiled, and he smiled back—­crookedly.

“What’s the matter?” she cried above the drum of the flying hoofs.

“Nothing,” he shouted back.

He hoped she believed him.  And bitter almonds were not as bitter as that hope.

Then the wide expanse of the slide was before them.  Now some slides have trails across their unstable backs, and some have not.  Some are utterly unsafe to cross and others can be crossed with small risk.  There was no trail across this particular slide, and it did not present a dangerous appearance.  Neither does quicksand—­till you step on it.