"Miss Helen, that ain't a wild idee," said Roy, seriously. "I reckon your sister is pretty close on the trail. Las Vegas, don't you savvy it thet way?"
Carmichael's answer was to stalk out of the room.
"Call him back!" cried Helen, apprehensively.
"Hold on, boy!" called Roy, sharply.
Helen reached the door simultaneously with Roy. The cowboy picked up his sombrero, jammed it on his head, gave his belt a vicious hitch that made the gun-sheath jump, and then in one giant step he was astride Ranger.
"Carmichael! Stay!" cried Helen.
The cowboy spurred the black, and the stones rang under iron-shod hoofs.
"Bo! Call him back! Please call him back!" importuned Helen, in distress.
"I won't," declared Bo Rayner. Her face shone whiter now and her eyes were like fiery flint. That was her answer to a loving, gentle-hearted sister; that was her answer to the call of the West.
"No use," said Roy, quietly. "An' I reckon I'd better trail him up."
He, too, strode out and, mounting his horse, galloped swiftly away.
It turned out that Bo, was more bruised and scraped and shaken than she had imagined. One knee was rather badly cut, which injury alone would have kept her from riding again very soon. Helen, who was somewhat skilled at bandaging wounds, worried a great deal over these sundry blotches on Bo's fair skin, and it took considerable time to wash and dress them. Long after this was done, and during the early supper, and afterward, Bo's excitement remained unabated. The whiteness stayed on her face and the blaze in her eyes. Helen ordered and begged her to go to bed, for the fact was Bo could not stand up and her hands shook.
"Go to bed? Not much," she said. "I want to know what he does to Riggs."
It was that possibility which had Helen in dreadful suspense. If Carmichael killed Riggs, it seemed to Helen that the bottom would drop out of this structure of Western life she had begun to build so earnestly and fearfully. She did not believe that he would do so. But the uncertainty was torturing.
"Dear Bo," appealed Helen, "you don't want--Oh! you do want Carmichael to--to kill Riggs?"
"No, I don't, but I wouldn't care if he did," replied Bo, bluntly.
"Do you think--he will?"
"Nell, if that cowboy really loves me he read my mind right here before he left," declared Bo. "And he knew what I thought he'd do."