Ride! Holy smoke!" He crossed the porch, leaped into the saddle and disappeared amid a clatter of hoofs.
Betty stood rigid in the doorway, listening--dreading to hear that which she expected to hear--the sound of a pistol shot which would tell her that Calumet and Taggart had met.
But no sound reached her ears from the direction of the timber grove.
She heard another sound presently--the faint beat of hoofs that grew more distinct each second.

It was Dade and Malcolm coming, she knew, and when they finally rode up and Dade flung himself from the saddle and darted to her side she was paler than at any time since her first surprise of the night.
Again she was forced to tell her story.

And after it was finished, and she had watched Dade and Malcolm carry Neal Taggart from the room, she went over to where Bob sat, took him by the shoulder and led him to one of the kitchen windows, and there, holding him close to her, her face white, she stared with dreading, anxious eyes through the glass toward the timber clump.

She would have gone out to see for herself, but she knew that she could do nothing.

If he did not come back she knew that she would not want to stay at the Lazy Y any longer; she knew that without him-- She no longer weighed him in the balances of her affection as she stood there by the window, she did not critically array his good qualities against the bad.