“Scared?” she said thickly, “I was never less scared in my life.”
With the words she was conscious of a passionate longing for the feel of her Pappy’s old gun in her hands.
“Help me, Lord!” she whispered inaudibly, “Oh, my God, be not far from me!”
They followed no trail, but cut through thicket and glade in a lifting angle well calculated to bring them out at the cluster of buildings at the foot of Rainbow Cliff.
This was new country to Nance.
She had never been so high on Mystery Ridge.
She noticed how the buck-brush and manzanita had given place to yew and pine and fir tree, how the slants steepened sharply as they neared the summit.
She had told the truth when she said she was not frightened.
There was no fear in her, only a deep and surging anger that seemed to make her lungs labor for sufficient air. Her usually smiling lips were set together in a thin line.
To a student of physiognomy she would have presented an appearance of volcanic repression, her very calmness would have been a danger signal.