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184 took them daintily from between his fingers. And when Jud reluctantly ordered her away she did not blunder down the steps, but threw her weight back on her haunches and swerved lightly away. It fascinated Andrew; he had never seen so much of feline control in the muscles of a horse. He felt that the animal, if she chose, could walk across gravel without making any more sound that a mountain lion. When he turned back to the table he announced: "Pop, I've got to ride that horse. I've got to have her. How does she sell?"

"She ain't mine," said Pop. "You better ask Jud." Jud was at once white and red. In the long hours during which he had sat beside the bunk of Andrew in the room above, the outlaw had come to fill his mind as a perfect specimen of what a man should be. He looked at his hero, and then he looked into his mind and saw the picture of Sally. A way out occurred to him. "You can have her when you can ride her," he said. "She ain't much use except to look at. But if you can saddle her and ride her before you leave—well, you can leave on her, Andy."

It was the beginning of busy days for Andrew. The cold weather was coming on rapidly. Now and then they had a flurry of snow, and, though it melted as soon as it reached the ground, the higher mountains above them were swiftly whitening, while the line of the snow was creeping nearer and nearer. The sight of it alarmed Andrew, and, with the thought of being snowbound in these hills, his blood turned cold. What he yearned for were the open spaces of the mountain desert, where he could see the enemy approach. But every day in the cabin the terror grew that some one would pass, some one, unnoticed, would observe the stranger. The whisper would reach Tomo—the posse would come again,