It was a critical, desperate situation. He
thought first of the girl, and groaned in spirit, prayed that it
would be given him to save her. When he remembered himself it was
with the stunning consciousness that he could conceive of no
situation which he would have exchanged for this one--where fortune
had set him a perilous task of loyalty to a friend, to a helpless
girl.
"Senor, senor!" suddenly whispered Mercedes, clinging to him.
"Listen! I hear horses coming!"
III
A FLIGHT INTO THE DESERT
UNEASY and startled, Gale listened and, hearing nothing, wondered
if Mercedes's fears had not worked upon her imagination. He felt
a trembling seize her, and he held her hands tightly.
"You were mistaken, I guess," he whispered.
"No, no, senor."
Dick turned his ear to the soft wind. Presently he heard, or
imagined he heard, low beats. Like the first faint, far-off beats
of a drumming grouse, they recalled to him the Illinois forests of
his boyhood. In a moment he was certain the sounds were the padlike
steps of hoofs in yielding sand. The regular tramp was not that of
grazing horses.
On the instant, made cautious and stealthy by alarm, Gale drew
Mercedes deeper into the gloom of the shrubbery. Sharp pricks from
thorns warned him that he was pressing into a cactus growth, and
he protected Mercedes as best he could. She was shaking as one with
a sever chill. She breathed with little hurried pants and leaned
upon him almost in collapse.
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