You can't go back if they find out--" There was no need for him to finish that sentence.
"I don't know," said Marian, "what I shall do. I hadn't thought much about it."
"I haven't thought much about anything else," Bud told her straightforwardly. "If Jerry flags you, you 'd better keep going. Couldn't you go to friends?"
"I could--if I had any. Bud, you don't understand. Eddie is the only relative I have on earth, that I know at all. He is--he's with the Catrockers and Lew dominates him completely. Lew has pushed Ed into doing things so that I must shield both or neither. And Eddie's just a boy. So I've no one at all."
Bud studied this while they rode on through the defile that was more frequently a tunnel, since the succession of caves always had an outlet which Marian found. She had stopped now and dismounted, and they were leading their horses down a steep, scrambling place with the stars showing overhead.
"A blowhole," Marian informed him briefly. "We'll come into another cave, soon, and while it's safe if you know it, I'll explain now that you must walk ahead of your horse and keep your right hand always in touch with the wall until we see the stars again. There's a ledge-five feet wide in the narrowest place, if you are nervous about ledges--and if you should get off that you'd have a drop of ten feet or so. We found that the ledge makes easier travelling, because the bottom is full of rocks and nasty depressions that are noticeable only with lights."
She started off again, and Bud followed her, his gloved fingers touching the right wall, his soul humbled before the greatness of this little woman with the deep, troubled eyes.
When they came out into the starlight she stopped and listened for what seemed to Bud a very long time.
"If they are coming, they are a long way behind us," she said relievedly, and remounted. "Boise knows his trail and has made good time. And your horse has proven beyond all doubt that he's a thoroughbred. I've seen horses balk at going where we have gone."
"And I've seen men who counted themselves brave as any, who wouldn't do what you are doing to-night; Jerry, for instance.
I wish you'd go back. I can't bear having you take this risk."
"I can't go back, Bud. Not if they find I've gone." Then he heard her laugh quietly. "I can't imagine now why I stayed and endured it all this while. I think I only needed the psychological moment for rebellion, and to-night the moment came. So you see you have really done me a service by getting into this scrape. It's the first time I have been off the ranch in a year."
"If you call that doing you a service, I'm going to ask you to let me do something also for you." Bud half smiled to himself in the darkness, thinking how diplomatic he was. "If you're found out, you'll have to keep on going, and I take it you wouldn't be particular where you went. So I wish you 'd take charge of part of this money for me, and if you leave, go down to my mother, on the Tomahawk ranch, out from Laramie. Anyone can tell you where it is, when you get down that way If you need any money use it. And tell mother I sent her the finest cook in the country. Mother, by the way, is a great musician, Marian. She taught me all I know of music.
You'd get along just fine with mother. And she needs you, honest. She isn't very strong, yet she can't find anyone to suit, down there--"
"I might not suit, either," said Marian, her voice somewhat muffled.
"Oh, I'm not afraid of that. And--there's a message I want to send--I promised mother I'd--"
"Oh, hush! You're really an awfully poor prevaricator, Bud.
This is to help me, you're planning."
"Well--it's to help me that I want you to take part of the money. The gang won't hold you up, will they? And I want mother to have it. I want her to have you, too,--to help out when company comes drifting in there, sometimes fifteen or twenty strong. Especially on Sunday. Mother has to wait on them and cook for them, and--as long as you are going to cook for a bunch, you may as well do it where it will be appreciated, and where you'll be treated like a--like a lady ought to be treated."
"You're even worse--" began Marian, laughing softly, and stopped abruptly, listening, her head turned behind them."
Sh-sh-someone is coming behind us," she whispered. "We're almost through--come on, and don't talk!"
