The song died on her lips.

It could not be Staford coming so noisily through the brush and from that direction.

Even as the thought came, she heard the gun again, a little farther away down the narrow valley below the camp, and, in the same moment, the noise on the ridge grew louder, as though some heavy animal were crashing through the bushes.

And then suddenly, as she stood there in frightened indecision, a long-horned, wild-eyed steer broke through the brush on the crest of the ridge and plunged down the steep slope toward the camp.
Weak and helpless with fear, Helen could neither scream nor run, but stood fascinated by the very danger that menaced her--powerless, even, to turn her eyes away from the frightful creature that had so rudely broken the quiet seclusion of the little glade.

Behind the steer, even as the frenzied animal leaped from the brow of the hill, she saw a horseman, as wild in his appearance and in his reckless rushing haste as the creature he pursued.