Miss Armitage had left the buggy.  She followed to the opening and stood watching Tisdale until, unable to find a safe hitching-place, he turned another bend.  The remaining horse pulled at his halter and neighed shrilly for his mate.  She went to him.  After a moment she untied him and led him through the passage.  He followed easily, crowding her sometimes, yet choosing his steps with the caution of a superior animal in a hard situation.  Midway over the break in the road, where it was narrowest, he halted with a forefoot on a perilous table of granite, feeling, testing its stability.  “That’s right, be careful,” she admonished, allowing the strap to slacken while she, herself, balanced her weight on the rocking slab.  “But it is safe enough—­you see.  Now, now, Tuck, come on.”

But as she started on, Tisdale reappeared at the curve and, waving her hand to reassure him, she took an incautious step.  The slab, relieved suddenly of her weight, tilted back and at the same instant caught on its lowered edge the weight of the following horse.  He backed off, jerking the halter taut, but she kept her hold, springing again to the surface of the rock.  Loose splinters of granite began to clatter down the slope; then, in the moment she paused to gather her equilibrium, she felt Tisdale’s arm reaching around to take the strap.  “Creep by me,” he said quietly.  “No, between me and the bluff, sidewise; there’s room.”  She gained safe ground and stood waiting while he brought the bay across.  A last rain of rock struck an answering echo through the gorge.

“What made you?” he asked.  “You knew I would hurry back.  What made you? handicapped, too, by those skirts and abominable heels.”

“I saw you were hurt—­the vixen meant to hurt—­and I knew I could manage Tuck.  I—­I thought you might need me.”

Her breath was coming hard and quick; her eyes were big and shadowy and, looking into their depths, the light began to play softly in his own.  “You thought right,” he said.  “I am going to.”

He turned to lead the horse around to the cleft where he had left his mate.  Miss Armitage followed.  She regarded his broad back, pursing her lips a little and ruffling her brows.  “It is only a bruise,” he said presently over his shoulder, “and it served me right.  Lighter warned me of that trick.”

Nevertheless the handkerchief with which he had wrapped the bruise was showing a red stain, and past the break in the road he changed the halter to his left hand.  The hitching-place he had chosen was in a cleft formed by a divided spur of the mountain.  It was roofed by the boughs of two pines, and the boles of the trees offered secure hold.  She seated herself on a boulder, set benchwise against the rocky wall, and watched him critically while he tied the second horse.

“How pleasant,” she said intrepidly; “it is like coming unexpectedly into a room ready furnished in brown and green.”

Tisdale turned.  “I could make you comfortable in this pocket, if it came to that,” he said.  “It’s sheltered and level as a floor, and I could make you a bed, springy and fragrant, of boughs; the camp-fire would close the door.  And you needn’t go hungry with Lighter’s lunch and your apples; or thirsty with my drinking-cup to fill down there at the stream.”