Forbes left the ranch after breakfast the next day, and Cairness went with him to Tombstone. He had business there, connected with one of his mines.

Felipa spent the day, for the most part, in riding about the ranch and in anticipating the night. Her husband had promised to be back soon after moonrise. When it had begun to turn dark, she dressed herself all in white and went out to swing in the hammock until it should be time for her lonely dinner.

Before long she heard a horse coming at a gallop up the road, to the front of the house. She put out her hand and pushed aside the vines, but could see little until the rider, dismounting and dropping his reins to hang on the ground, ran up the steps. It was the mail carrier, the young hero of the Indian massacre. Felipa saw in a moment that he was excited. She thought of her husband at once, and sat up in the hammock.

"Well?" she said peremptorily.

"It\'s—" the boy looked around nervously. "If you\'d come into the house—" he ventured.

She went into the bedroom, half dragging him by the shoulder, and shut the door. "Now!" she said, "make haste."

"It\'s Mr. Cairness, ma\'am," he whispered.

[Pg 325]

"Is he hurt?" she shook him sharply.

The boy explained that it was not that, and she let him go, in relief.

"But he is goin\' to be. That\'s what I come so quick to tell you." He stopped again.

"Will you make haste?" cried Felipa, out of patience.

"He\'s coming back from Tombstone with some money, ain\'t he?"

Felipa nodded. "A very little," she said.

"Well, they think it\'s a lot."

"Who?"

"The fellers that\'s after him. They\'re goin\' to hold him up fifteen miles out, down there by where the Huachuca road crosses. He\'s alone, ain\'t he?"

"Yes," said Felipa.

"How do you know this?"

"Old Manuel he told me. You don\'t know him. It\'s an old Greaser, friend of mine. He don\'t want no one to tell he told, they\'d get after him. But it\'s so, all right. There\'s three of them."

A stable man passed the window. Felipa called to him. "Bring me my horse, quick, and mount four men! Don\'t take five minutes and be well armed," she ordered in a low voice. Hers was the twofold decision of character and of training that may not be disregarded. The man started on a run.

"What you goin\' to do?" the boy asked. He was round-eyed with dismay and astonishment.

Felipa did not answer. She broke her revolver and looked into the chambers. Two of them were empty,[Pg 326] and she took some cartridges from a desk drawer and slipped them in. The holster was attached to her saddle, and she rarely rode without it.

"You ain\'t goin\' to try to stop him?" the boy said stupidly. "He was goin\' to leave Tombstone at sundown. He\'ll be to the place before you ken ketch him, sure."

"We\'ll see," she answered shortly; "it is where the Huachuca road crosses, you are certain?"

He nodded forcibly. "Where all them mesquites is to one side, and the arroyo to the other. They\'ll be behind the mesquite. But you ain\'t goin\' to head him off," he added, "there ain\'t even a short cut. The road\'s the shortest."

The stableman came on a run, leading her horse, and she fairly leaped down the steps, and slipping the pistol into the holster mounted with a spring. "All of you follow me," she said; "they are going to hold up Mr. Cairness."

On the instant she put her horse to a run and tore off through the gate toward the open country. It was dark, but by the stars she could see the road and its low bushes and big stones that danced by as her horse, with its belly to the ground, sped on. She strained her ears and caught the sound of hoofs. The men were following her, the gleam of her white dress guiding them. She knew they could not catch her. The horse she rode was a thoroughbred, the fastest on the ranch; not even Cairness\'s own could match it. It stretched out its long black neck and went evenly ahead, almost without[Pg 327] motion, rising over a dog hole now and then, coming down again, and going on, unslacking. She felt the bit steadily and pressed ............