CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: GUARDIAN ANGELS ARE RIDING POINT.
They plunged into darkness again, rode at a half trot over smooth, hard sand, Bud trusting himself wholly to Marian and to the sagacity of the two horses who could see, he hoped, much better than he himself could.
His keen hearing had caught a faint sound from behind them--far back in the crevice-like gorge they had just quitted, he believed.

For Marian's sake he stared anxiously ahead, eager for the first faint suggestion of starlight before them.

It came, and he breathed freer and felt of his gun in its holster, pulling it forward an inch or two.
"This way, Bud," Marian murmured, and swung Boise to the left, against the mountain under and through which they seemed to have passed.

She led him into another small gorge whose extent he could not see, and stopped him with a hand pressed against Sunfish's shoulder.
"We'd better get down and hold our horses quiet," she cautioned.

"Boise may try to whinny, and he mustn't." They stood side by side at their horses' heads, holding the animals close.