Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/82

68 “What you goin' to do?” It was the same unhurried voice which had spoken to Vic on the day of the rescue and it irritated him in the same manner now. Kate had come running from the house with her apron fluttering.

“I'm going down that slope to the north,” said Vic, “and I'll get by 'em hell-bent-for-election. Once I show my heels to that lot they're done!”

He talked as much to restore his courage as from, confidence, for if the posse sighted him going down that slope on the gray it would take a super-horseman and a super-horse to escape before they closed the gap. Barry considered the situation with a new gleam in his eye.

“Wait a minute,” he said, as Vic started towards the corral. “That way you got planned is a good way—to die. You listen to me.”

But here Kate broke in on them. “Dan, what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to take the gray and go down the slope. I'm going to lead 'em off Vic's trail,” said Barry quietly, but it seemed to Vic that he avoided his wife's eye.

The voice of Betty Neal, Vic knew, would have risen shrill at a time like this. Kate spoke even more low than usual, but there was a thing in her voice that struck a tremor through Gregg. “If it's death for him, what is it for you?”

“Nothing at all. If they see me and head for me be-