Chapter 24 - Page 2

he close enough--" Val began fearfully. "Oh, we're too far away to do a thing!"

Kent kept his eyes to the glasses. "We couldn't do a thing if we were right there. Man's in swimming water already. Jake ain't riding in--from the motions he's ordering Man back."

"Oh, please let me look a minute! I won't get excited, Kent, and I'll tell you everything I see--please!" Val's teeth were fairly chattering with excitement, so that Kent hesitated before he gave up the glasses. But it seemed boorish to refuse. She snatched at them as he took them from his eyes, and placed them nervously to her own.

"Oh, I see them both!" she cried, after a second or two. "The sheriff's got his rifle in his hands--Kent, do you suppose he'd--"

"Just a bluff, pal. They all do it. What--"

Val gave a start. "Oh, he shot, Kent! I saw him take aim--it looked as if he pointed it straight at Manley, and the smoke--" She moved the glasses slowly, searching the river.

"Well, he'd have to be a dandy, to hit anything on the water, and with the sun in his eyes, too," Kent assured her, hardly taking his eyes from her face with its varying expression. Almost he could see what was taking place at the river, just by watching her.

"Oh, there's Manley, away out! Why, your Michael is swimming beautifully, Kent! His head is high out of the water, and the water is churning like--Oh, Manley's holding his rifle up over his head--he's looking back toward shore. I wonder," she added softly, "what he's thinking about! Manley! you're my husband--and once I--"

"Draw a bead on that gazabo on shore," Kent interrupted her faint faring up of sentiment toward the man she had once loved and loved no more.

Val drew a long breath and turned the glasses reluctantly from the fugitive. "I don't see him--oh, yes! He's down beside a rock, on one knee, and he's taking a rest across the rock, and is squinting along--oh, he can't hit him at that distance, can he, Kent? Would he dare--why, it would be murder, wouldn't it? Oh-h--he shot again!"

Kent reached up a hand and took the glasses from her eyes with a masterful gesture. "You let me look," he said laconically. "I'm steadier than you."

Val crept closer to him, and looked up into his face. She could read nothing there; his mouth was shut tight so that it was a stern, straight line, but that told her nothing. He always looked so when he was intent upon something, or thinking deeply. She turned her eyes toward the river, flowing smoothly across the mouth of the coulee. Between, the land lay sleeping lazily in the hazy sunlight of mid-autumn. The grass was brown, the rocky outcroppings of the coulee wall yellow and gray and red--and the river was so blue, and so quiet! Surely that sleepy coulee and that