“No.”

There was so much of hatred in the one short word which she flung at him, so much of passionate contempt, that he looked at her wonderingly.

“What’s the matter, Miss Waverly?” he asked, his voice a shade gentler.  “You seem all different somehow.  Are you more tired than you thought?”

She laughed and the wonder grew in his eyes.  He had never heard a woman laugh like that, had not dreamed that this girl’s voice could grow so bitter.

“No,” she told him coldly.  She jerked her pony’s reins out of Thornton’s hand.  “I am going to ride on.  And I suppose you will ride that poor wounded horse until it drops!”

“No,” he said.  “That’s why I asked if you knew the trails.  I didn’t notice he limped out there where I put the saddle on.  It was dark under the trees, you know.”

“Was it?” she retorted sarcastically, drawing another quick, searching look from him.

There was no call for an answer and he made none.  He stepped to his horse’s head, lifted the wincing forefoot very tenderly, and stooping close to it looked at it for a long time.  The girl was behind the broad, stooping back.  Impulsively her hand crept into the bosom of her dress, her face going steadily white as her fingers curved and tightened about the grip of the small calibre revolver she carried there.  And then she jerked her hand out, empty.

She saw him straighten up, heard again the long, heavy sigh and marked how his face was convulsed with rage.

“I don’t know why a man did that.”  He was only ten steps away and yet she turned her head a little sideways that she might catch the low words.  She shivered.  His voice was cold and hard and deadly.  It was difficult for her to believe that in reality he had not forgotten her presence.

“No, I don’t know why a man did that.  But I’m going to know.  Yes, I’m going to know if it takes fifty years.”

“Where is my trail?” she called sharply.  “I am going.”

“You couldn’t find it alone.  I’m going with you.”

Her scorn of him leaped higher in her eyes.  It was her thought that he was going to ride this poor, tortured brute.  For she knew that there was no other horse in the barn or about the camp.  But he was quietly loosening his cinch, lifting down the heavy Mexican saddle, removing the bit from his horse’s mouth.

“What are you going to do?” She bit her lips after the question, but it had leaped out involuntarily.

“I’m going to leave him here for the present.  The wound will heal up after a while.”

With the saddle thrown over his own shoulders, he ran a gentle hand over the soft nose of his horse which was thrust affectionately against his side, and turned away.  She watched him, expecting him to go back to the barn to leave his saddle and bridle.  But instead he set his face toward the hills beyond the cabin, where she supposed the trail was.

“I’ll pick up another horse at the next ranch,” he offered casually by way of explanation.  “And we had better hit the trail.  It’s getting late.”