Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/51

 ably was not gum. It looked like a bad hour for the man who cut the fence, Rawlins thought, and with the thought the person in question burst suddenly into view on top of a little rise not more than twenty yards away.

The person who had ridden across the forbidden territory, desecrating the sacred institution of a fence to do so, appeared on the crest of the little rise under such headway that it was impossible to bring the horse up sharply and cut it for safety away from the sentinel who blocked the exit. Some effort was made to check the horse's plunge down the rather abrupt little hillside, which was not effective until the bottom had been reached.

There the rider swung round as if to give the fence-guard a run for it, no doubt with the design of cutting the fence farther along and escaping from the trap. Not until that moment, horse and rider presenting side view, had Rawlins seen, or even suspected, that the bold trespasser on Senator Galloway's usurped pastures was a woman.

Whether she considered a race on her winded horse against the fresh one of the guard lost before it was begun, or whether it was against her code to turn her back to a foe, Rawlins could do no more than guess as she turned her mount with decisive hand and faced again toward the fence. Rawlins had a pretty good notion that the latter condition was the one which moved her, basing his belief on the defiance proclaimed in every line of her body, from her sombrero-covered head to her spurred boots.

The fence-rider sat waiting her arrival, his lean jaws bunching in hard little knots at the hinges as he bit