Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/192

 “Clark! she cried. “Clark Moran! Flash! Flash!” Then he was beside her, sitting on the edge of the bunk and reaching out to take her in his arms.

“Don’t excite yourself, my dear,” he said. “No one can hear you. A long hunt hasended. We’ll have our honeymoon after all; a trifle belated, perhaps, but all the sweeter for that.”

She noted the gun swinging at his hip and feared for Moran should she call again. She braced her hands against his chest. The blanket fell back and the man’s arms gripped her more convulsively.

He sprang suddenly erect, his face paling as a sudden awful cry rang out in the canyon.

At the first note from the girl Moran had leaped from his blankets, snatching his belt from beneath his rolled coat which answered for a pillow. He jerked the heavy automatic from the holster and dropped the belt as he ran. Before the man had recovered from the shock of the lobo howl Moran had him covered from the door.

Dim as the light was Moran still recognized the handsome, dissipated face of Luther Nash. A cold apprehension clutched him—a sudden thought that Nash was at the bottom of this reason why