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Bassett looked at his watch. It was half past twelve.
"Even if I could get a horse I couldn't get out of the town."
"You might, on foot. They'll be trailing Rickett's horse by dawn. And if
you can get out of town I can get you a horse. I can get you out, too, I
think. I know every foot of the place."
A feeling of theatrical unreality was Bassett's chief emotion during the
trying time that followed. The cloaked and shrouded figure of the woman
ahead, the passage through two dark and empty rooms by pass key to an
unguarded corridor in the rear, the descent of the fire-escape, where
they stood flattened against the wall while a man, possibly one of the
posse, rode in, tied his horse and stamped in high heeled boots into the
building, and always just ahead the sure movement and silent tread of
the woman, kept his nerves taut and increased his feeling of the unreal.
At the foot of the fire-escape the woman slid out of sight noiselessly,
but under Bassett's feet a tin can rolled and clattered. Then a horse
snorted close to his shoulder, and he was frozen with fright. After
that she gave him her hand, and led him through an empty outbuilding and
another yard into a street.
At two o'clock that morning Bassett, waiting in a lonely road near what
he judged to be the camp of a drilling crew, heard a horse coming toward
him and snorting nervously as it came and drew back into the shadows
until he recognized the shrouded silhouette leading him.
"It belongs to my son," she said. "I'll fix it with him to-morrow. But
if you're caught you'll have to say you came out and took him, or you'll
get us all in trouble."
She gave him careful instructions as to how to find the trail, and urged
him to haste.
"If you get him," she advised, "better keep right on over the range."
He paused, with his foot in the stirrup.
"You seem pretty certain he's taken to the mountains."
"It's your only chance. They'll get him anywhere else."
He mounted and prepared to ride off. He would have shaken hands with
her, but the horse was still terrified at her shrouded figure and
veered and snorted when she approached. "However it turns out," he said,
"you've done your best, and I'm grateful."
The horse moved off and left her standing there, her cowl drawn forward
and her hands crossed on her breast. She stood for a moment, facing
toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and posture. Then she
turned back toward the town.