A sudden light illumined Billy’s mind.  Why had it not occurred to him before?  This was Bridge’s Penelope!  The woman he loved was loved by his best friend.  And she had sent a messenger to him, to Billy, to save her lover.  She had come here to the office tonight to question a stranger—­a man she thought an outlaw and a robber—­because she could not rest without word from the man she loved.  Billy stiffened.  He was hurt to the bottom of his heart; but he did not blame Bridge—­it was fate.  Nor did he blame Barbara because she loved Bridge.  Bridge was more her kind anyway.  He was a college guy.  Billy was only a mucker.

“Bridge got away all right,” he said.  “And say, he didn’t have nothin’ to do with pullin’ off that safe crackin’.  I done it myself.  He didn’t know I was in town an’ I didn’t know he was there.  He’s the squarest guy in the world, Bridge is.  He follered me that night an’ took a shot at me, thinkin’ I was the robber all right but not knowin’ I was me.  He got my horse, an’ when he found it was me, he made me take your pony an’ make my get-away, fer he knew Villa’s men would croak me sure if they caught me.  You can’t blame him fer that, can you?  Him an’ I were good pals—­he couldn’t do nothin’ else.  It was him that made me bring your pony back to you.  It’s in the corral now, I reckon.  I was a-bringin’ it back when they got me.  Now you better go.  This ain’t no place fer you, an’ I ain’t had no sleep fer so long I’m most dead.”  His tones were cool.  He appeared bored by her company; though as a matter of fact his heart was breaking with love for her—­love that he believed unrequited—­and he yearned to tear loose his bonds and crush her in his arms.

It was Barbara’s turn now to be hurt.  She drew herself up.

“I am sorry that I have disturbed your rest,” she said, and walked away, her head in the air; but all the way back to the ranchhouse she kept repeating over and over to herself:  “Tomorrow they will shoot him!  Tomorrow they will shoot him!  Tomorrow they will shoot him!”

CHAPTER XIV

’Twixt love and duty

For an hour Barbara Harding paced the veranda of the ranchhouse, pride and love battling for the ascendency within her breast.  She could not let him die, that she knew; but how might she save him?

The strains of music and the laughter from the bunkhouse had ceased.  The ranch slept.  Over the brow of the low bluff upon the opposite side of the river a little party of silent horsemen filed downward to the ford.  At the bluff’s foot a barbed-wire fence marked the eastern boundary of the ranch’s enclosed fields.  The foremost horseman dismounted and cut the strands of wire, carrying them to one side from the path of the feet of the horses which now passed through the opening he had made.

Down into the river they rode following the ford even in the darkness with an assurance which indicated long familiarity.  Then through a fringe of willows out across a meadow toward the ranch buildings the riders made their way.  The manner of their approach, their utter silence, the hour, all contributed toward the sinister.