“Aren’t you coming with us?”

“No.”

“But when they find us gone?”

“Think of Dan—­not me!”

“God be merciful to you!”

In a moment the back door of the shanty creaked.  They must be opening it by inches.  When it was wide they would run for the stable.  He wished now that he had warned Kate to walk, for a slow moving object catches the eye more seldom than one which travels fast.  If Lee Haines was watching at that moment his attention must be held to Buck for one all important minute.  He stood up, rolled a cigarette swiftly, and lighted it.  The spurt and flare of the match would hold even the most suspicious eye for a short time, and in those few seconds Kate and her father might pass out of view behind the stable.

He sat down again.  A muffled sneeze came from the ranch house and Buck felt his blood run cold.  The forgotten cigarette between his fingers burned to a dull red and then went out.  In the stable a horse stamped.  He leaned back, locked his hands idly behind his head, and commenced to whistle.  Now there was a snort, as of a horse when it leaves the shelter of a barn and takes the first breath of open air.

All these sounds were faint, but to Buck, straining his ears in an agony of suspense, each one came like the blast of a trumpet.  Next there was a click like that of iron striking against rock.  Evidently they were leading the horses around on the far side of the house.  With a trembling hand he relighted his cigarette and waited, waited, waited.  Then he saw them pass below the house!  They were dimly stalking figures in the night, but to Buck it seemed as though they walked in the blaze of ten thousand searchlights.  He held his breath in expectancy of that mocking laugh from the house—­that sharp command to halt—­that crack of the revolver.

Yet nothing happened.  Now he caught the click of the horses’ iron shoes against the rocks farther and farther down the valley.  Still no sound from the ranch house.  They were safe!

It was then that the great temptation seized on Buck.

It would be simple enough for him to break away.  He could walk to the stable, saddle his horse, and tear past the ranch house as fast as his pony could gallop.  By the time the outlaws were ready for the pursuit, he would be a mile or more away, and in the hills such a handicap was enough.  One thing held him.  It was frail and subtle like the invisible net of the enchanter—­that word he had passed to Jim Silent, to see that nothing came up the valley and to appear in the ranch house at sunrise.

In the midst of his struggle, strangely enough, he began to whistle the music he had learned from Dan Barry, the song of The Untamed, those who hunt for ever, and are for ever hunted.  When his whistling died away he touched his hand to his lips where Kate had kissed him, and then smiled.  The sun pushed up over the eastern hills.