Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/167

Rh threefold overpaid. At that little yellow heap he remained staring, unheeding the sound of the retreating outlaws. At it he still stared with fascinated eyes while the door banged and the clatter of galloping hoofs began.

"It ain't possible," he said at last, "thieves have begun to pay."

His eyes sought the ceiling.

"So that's Red Pierre?" said McGuire.

As for Pierre and Jacqueline, they were instantly safe in the black heart of the mountains. Many a mile of hard riding lay before them, however, and already the dance must be nearly ready to begin in the Crittenden schoolhouse. There was no road, not even a trail that they could follow. They had never even seen the Crittenden schoolhouse; they knew its location only by vague descriptions.

But they had ridden a thousand times in places far more bewildering and less known to them. Like all true denizens of the mountain-desert, they had a sense of direction as uncanny as that of an Eskimo. Now they struck off confidently through the dark and trailed up and down through the mountains until they reached a hollow in the center of which shone a group of dim lights. It was the schoolhouse near the Barnes place, the scene of the dance.

So they turned back behind the hills and in the covert of a group of cottonwoods they kindled two more little fires, shading them on three sides with rocks and leaving them open for the sake of light on the fourth.

They worked busily for a time, without a word