"I didn't know you were such an accomplished horseman," said Marion.

"Didn't you? Well, you see--"

At that instant the pony suffered a fresh access of alarm. He bounded suddenly sideways, and at the same time ducked as if he purposed to stand on his head, though what good that would have done only he knew.

The movement threw Smythe over the pony's head, and flat on his back in the dust; and in a twinkling Peanuts was dashing up the road, with his tail in the air, and the stirrups flapping at his sides.

For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before Marion and Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar, torn from the b.u.t.ton, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was perfect.

"As I was saying, when interrupted," he began, continuing to minister to the sombrero, "you see I am an accomplished horseman."

Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Then Hillyer hastened to a.s.sist Smythe to rise.

"Not hurt, I hope?" said Robert.

"Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a wreck."

They laughed now without restraint, which seemed to please Smythe immensely. He proceeded to tuck the end of the torn collar back into its place, where it refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust the abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his head.

"I hope you'll forgive us for laughing," said Marion, "but--"

"Say no more about it, please!" protested Smythe. "I'd rather make you laugh than weep--a.s.suming that anybody would weep for me."

"Oh, I'd have felt very badly if you'd been hurt," Marion a.s.sured him.

"And you might have been, too."

"No, a cropper like that's nothing. Peanuts isn't--" He paused just a second to look into Marion's eyes with an expression that arrested her attention sharply. "Peanuts isn't Sunnysides."

"Sunnysides?" she cried out unguardedly.

Smythe's eyes warned her, as he waited to give her time for self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer was in her confidence.

"Is there news--about--Sunnysides?" she faltered, struggling desperately with herself.

"Yes," he answered. Then he continued slowly, in as light a manner as possible, the while he held her with a concentrated gaze: "I'd been down the valley as far as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about two miles below where Haig's road joins this, I saw the sorrels in a cloud of dust. 'h.e.l.lo!' I said. 'Something's up, or the sorrels wouldn't be driven like that.' In a minute or two I made out Bill Craven, one of Haig's men, leaning forward in the seat of a road wagon, and laying on the whip. 'If Haig saw that!' I thought. And so I--"

"Go on, please!" said Marion shrilly.

But Smythe was purposely deliberate; for he saw Hillyer looking at her curiously.

"I wasn't going to let anybody abuse his horses if I could prevent it.

Besides, how did I know but Craven was stealing the sorrels? I threw my pony straight across the road. Craven reined the sorrels up on their hind legs, almost on top of me.

"'What in h.e.l.l?' he yelled.

"'That's what I want to know,' I answered.

"'Can't you see I'm in a hurry, d.a.m.n you?' he shouted angrily.

"'That's exactly what I do see,' I replied. 'But Haig never whips those horses.'

"'That's none of your business, and Haig ain't carin' much now,' he fired back at me. 'Get out o' my way, or I'll--'

"'Now just keep cool!' I told him. 'What's the trouble?'

"Craven snorted, but he told me, as the quickest way out of it. Haig had been hurt--trying to ride Sunnysides. He's--"

"Hurt? How?" asked Marion; and Smythe was relieved to detect a new steadiness in her voice. She had pa.s.sed the danger point.

"The horse went over backwards, pinning him to the ground, with the saddle horn in his stomach. Craven's gone for the doctor."

She gave him one long, searching look, as if to pluck out anything he might have been hiding from her. Then she turned swiftly toward the automobile.

"Come, Robert! Quick!" she commanded.

She climbed quickly into the machine, followed by Hillyer, who was puzzled and alarmed by what he had seen in Marion's face.

"You too, Mr. Smythe. Hurry!" cried Marion.

"But my horse?" objected Smythe.

"He'll run home," answered Marion impatiently. "Come! We may need you."

Smythe obeyed, and jumped into the tonneau, while Robert cranked up and threw in the clutch.

"Fast!" cried Marion.

Hillyer glanced at her. She was very white; her lips were pressed together, her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The machine lurched under them.

"Faster!" urged Marion, in another minute.

The machine, with a kind of shudder, responded to Hillyer's hand, and shot out with fresh speed.

Another brief silence.

"The cut-out!" she ordered.

Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with the m.u.f.fler off, roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of her seat.

"The doctor?" she shouted in his ear.

"Craven had started for Tellurium," he yelled back. "Said he'd kill the sorrels. I told him there was a doctor at Lake Cobalt--Doctor Norris of Omaha--just arrived, with his family. 'You're not such a fool after all,' said Craven. (I'll talk with him about that later.) 'Thanks!' I said, and pulled my horse out of the way. 'That saves two days.' He gave the horses the whip again, and I started for Huntington's to tell you--Watch out! There's the turn!" he shouted in Hillyer's ear.

The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with the power off but still going at more than half-speed under its momentum, skidded and sc.r.a.ped around the turn into Haig's road.

"Now!" cried Marion.

Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went clamoring like a mad thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her worst fears.