The Pepper horse was neither stopping nor being killed. She skimmed along with no faltering in her stride as though she remembered a day in a quicksand. There was a debt to be paid, and if heart held out and the heaving sides did not prove false to her thoroughbred courage, the lengthening shadows would see it canceled before they became lost in the day's deepening twilight. Down a narrow valley she sped, the hills rolling the tattoo of her drumming hoofs as though they liked the sound and were reluctant to let it die. Taking a brook at a bound and scorning her rising thirst, she swirled around a sharp bend, and twitched her ears suddenly forward, the quick pressure of her rider's knees telling her that he had seen. Johnny slipped his Sharp's from its long sheath and, holding it at the ready, stood up in his stirrups, his horse somewhere finding a reserve power that fairly hurled her forward, the trim black legs whirring under her like flashing spokes of jet. The rider's lids narrowed to thin slits and the tight-pressed lips pressed tighter. Yard after yard he gained, second after second. The half mile became a quarter, steadily lessened and then, Pepper pounding over a stretch of rocky ground where the hammering of her hoofs rang out loudly, there was a quick turning in the saddles ahead, and a roar from the saddle behind, a ragged cloud of acrid smoke tearing itself to filmy bits and blending with the suddenly tenuous dust cloud in the rear. Big Tom cursed in sudden rage and whirled his horse behind Margaret's, his rifle spitting past her shoulder. His shelter bolted from in front of him as a Sharp's Special stung the SV horse, its rider barely able to keep her seat during the convulsive lunge. Big Tom leaped down behind his mount and rested the gun across the saddle. Before he could pull the trigger another Special passed through the animal's abdomen and, its force spent, struck his belt and doubled him up, gasping for breath as the agonized animal leaped forward. The cantle of the saddle, striking the barrel of the Winchester, tore the weapon from its owner's hands and left him, slowly straightening up, with a Colt for his only defense. Coming at him like a skimming swallow sped Pepper, her rider, having slipped the rifle back into its long sheath, standing erect in the stirrups, each hand holding a Colt. For a moment they were held aloft and then as the Bar H foreman drew his six-gun they chopped down and poured jets of flame and puffs of smoke over Pepper's head. The foreman twisted, fired aimlessly, lurched, fired again, and plunged forward, face down on the sand. Johnny slid his guns back into their holsters and raced for Margaret, who was fighting a pain-crazed horse. Slim and Cimarron, neck and neck now, jumped the brook, sped along the little valley, keyed to fighting pitch by the sound of distant shots, and flashed around the bend, where they pulled up sharply and looked across the level pasture.