Had the sun been shining the result must have been widely different.

The encounter with these men was so unexpected and the several changes of direction by Queenie so sudden and unavoidable that Sterry was not given a chance to take his bearings.  The one object was to get as far from them as possible in the quickest time in which it could be done.

When that distance became a safe one it would be soon enough to give attention to the points of the compass.

Nobly did Queenie do her duty.  She had carried her master out of many a peril, and she could be counted on to do it as long as the ability remained with her.  Sterry’s anxiety was really more on her account than on his own.  He knew there was little danger of himself being struck by the bullets of the rustlers, who, as I have shown, had no possible chance of taking any sort of aim, but she was a conspicuous target, which it would seem they ought to hit with little difficulty.

Often must a person in the situation of Sterry leave everything to his horse.  He did not seek to guide Queenie, but sat, or rather lay, in the saddle and on her neck, as she skimmed like a swallow over the undulating prairie.

Strange imaginings were in the brain of the young man during those few minutes.  He listened to each shot of the Winchesters, and then, instead of feeling any apprehension for himself, waited for the dreaded evidence that his horse had been struck.

The skilful railway engineer, sitting in his cab, with his hand on the throttle, can discover, on the instant, the slightest disarrangement in the mass of intricate mechanism over which he holds control.  His highly trained senses enable him to feel it like a flash.  So it was that Mont Sterry would have detected any injury to his horse as quickly as she herself.  No matter if but the abrasion of the skin, the puncture of the flesh, or the nipping of an ear, she would betray it involuntarily.

If she were wounded and should fall, the situation of her rider would be well-nigh hopeless.  He could only throw himself behind her body and have it out with his enemies.  Such a defence has been successfully made many a time by white men against Indians; but Sterry would not be fighting Crows nor Sioux, but those of his own race and blood, as brave and skilful as he.

“Thank God!” he murmured, after each shot, as the splendid play of the machinery under him continued without a break or tremor; “she was not hit that time.  She is running at her best.”

Once his heart stood still, for she seemed to quiver through her body, as if involuntarily shrinking from the prick of a sword.

In his alarm, Sterry rose to an upright posture in the saddle, and leaning to the right and left, and looking forward and behind him, searched for the wound.  He hardly expected to see it, for it would have been beyond his sight in any one of a dozen different portions of the body.