by Zane Grey
When Wade raised his head again to look back he saw six rangers in pursuit some three hundred rods behind. Two of the original posse had been eliminated. The sextet, riding two abreast, were holding their own with Wade. He recognized the broadshouldered Mahaffey, that implacable ranger captain who could ride and fight with the most noted in that intrepid service. Mahaffey would ride him down if that were possible, and failing that, Wade knew they would resort to rifles to stop him alive or dead.
Wade forced himself to desperate calculation of chances. He must not make a mistake. The rangers, long used to the pursuit of criminals, seldom blundered. Wade’s horse had exceptional speed and strength. The rangers used wiry little Mexican mustangs that could run all day without giving out. But in a short race of from five to ten miles they had no chance with Wade’s big black. Wade knew that they would soon ascertain that. Probably old horsemen among them could see that the black had not yes extended himself.
Leaning back, Wade untied his slicker which contained a blanket rolled around a pack of provisions and some bags of Bell’s gold It weighed fifty pounds or more. Wade let it slide off to roll in the road. His ideas was to lessen the burden of his horse and possibly check the rangers. When pursuing train or bank robbers they never passed by discarded packs. In this instance Mahaffey evidently ordered one of his men to halt and see what the fugitive had abandoned. The others kept on without slackening their pace.
Wooded rolling country lay no farther ahead than between two and three miles. The road appeared to turn into a defile between green hills. The grass growing in the middle of the road attested to its being but seldom traveled. There was a hamlet ten miles west of Mercer, but not this far south. Somewhere across country ran one of the thoroughfares that wagon trains used when working north and west. When Wade reached this he decided he would cross it and strike more to the south.
No doubt Mahaffey felt sure of his quarry, else his men would have resorted to rifles long ago. Wade dreaded that contingency. The intervening distance was not great enough; a good rifle shot could hit him or his horse before they could get out of range. Yet Wade felt his best game was to hold the black in, let the pursuers keep about the same distance or else gain a little, until he reached the wooded country. Once there, he would decide on his course.
The next time Wade looked back he saw the sixth rider coming up from the rear and gaining on his fellows. He rode a fast horse, undoubtedly the fastest of that posse. It appeared to be a lean mustang, rather rangier than the others and a horse to fear.
“Save yourself, Blackie,” called Wade to his running mount. “Steady now! Hold in.”
The horse lessened perceptibly that tendency to stretch lower and faster. His hoofbeat a light regular rhythmic tattoo on the hard road. Blackie was just getting warm. He had been a young race horse before Bell stole him to train him to show his heels to rangers.
The wide plains of the rangeland began to fall behind in timber-bordered wings. Wade was fast approaching the wooded country. Soon he saw it from the height of a ridge which sloped down into a valley. Then he ascertained that this was just one of the timbered creek bottoms so prevalent in Texas. But it was cover and in the thick of it he would be hard to head.
Wade resorted to a ruse that might throw his pursuers off the track. He did not wait until the road reached the woods, but left it and cut across in plain sight of the rangers to ride into the brush.
They would have to track him, which rangers were trained to do. They seldom lost a trail but they would have to go slowly, while he could accommodate his gait to the lay of the ground. A thicket of brambles and scrub oak offered poor travel on horseback. Wade turned to the right and rode as fast as he could under the trees, over logs and through brush to the shallow creek into which he spurred Blackie despite a possibility of quicksand. The horse had difficulty but made the crossing without getting mired. Twice Wade came within an ace of riding out upon the road again. Creek bottom and timbered belts narrowed between hills. Wade feared he might get boxed in, and halted his horse at a point where he could peep over the brush to see back along a quarter mile of the road.
This would give Blackie a rest, while the ranger horses would still be going. It struck Wade that Mahaffey might be too keen to send all his men into the brush to work out his tracks. Some of them might keep to the road. Wade bent far over, away from his creaking saddle, to listen, and his reward was a sound of hoof-beats on the road beyond the bend. Without a moment’s hesitation he urged Blackie out of the brush into a run. His shrewd guess was that the rangers could not hear the running of his horse as he had heard theirs.
The advantage was Wade’s. Down in the Hollow the shadows proclaimed that the afternoon was far advanced. If he could keep the rangers behind him until nightfall his escape was assured. As he did not know the country, it was imperative that he stay on the road until forced off.
Blackie ran easily along the winding creek-bottom road. It grew rocky and rough, necessitating a lessening speed. It followed and crossed the creek, wound through dells of elm and sycamore where slants of golden sunlight lightened the green gloom. Flocks of wild turkeys and troops of deer were disturbed at their drinking. The lessening volume of the creek and the little ledges of rock over which it poured convinced Wade that he was approaching its source. When the road began to climb away from the creek then Wade knew he would soon be out from cover.
So it turned out. Wade found himself once more in the open rangeland. It was, however, more undulating than the country surrounding Mercer. To his surprise and concern he found that the creek bottom had doubled back with the road, making a wide bend. What if the rangers were aware of that?
The black ears of his horse shot up. Wade turned his gaze from left to right. Three riders were sweeping across the plateau to head him off. One was Mahaffey and another was the ranger on the lean buckskin mustang.
“Out, Blackie! Run!” yelled Wade to his horse, and goaded him with the spurs. The black leaped as if he had been standing still, and in a few moments of dead run the danger that the rangers might head off Wade was over. They dashed into the road a full hundred rods behind. But not so far that Wade failed to hear Mahaffey’s far-carrying yell of baffled rage!
A peculiar familiar hot hiss in the air close to Wade’s head was followed by the crack of a rifle shot. Wade glanced back over his shoulder. The lean ranger was out in front of Mahaffey and the others. His mustang had free rein and was running, stretched low, on the instant a puff of white smoke rose. If Wade had not instinctively ducked he would have gotten a bullet through his middle. As it was, it cut him across the top of his head, tugging away his sombrero. The hot sting was like the gush of blood out of Wade’s heart, burning along his veins. These rangers would drive him to fight. They would force him into a corner. But no! They could never catch him.
Bending low and forward Wade called to the horse. “Run Blackie! . . . Oh, run away from them! . . . So I can keep my word to him!”
Bullets were striking up the dust in front of Wade. His pursuers were all shooting. They had the range. But for the difficulty of aiming true from a running horse they would swiftly have put a stop to Wade’s flight. He looked back. The lean ranger on the buckskin mustang had the lead on his comrades. Mahaffey was second and he was shooting a carbine. The third rode to one side behind him and he had a rifle to his shoulder. Far back on the road the other three rangers hove in sight.
Blackie drew away from his pursuers in a manner that must have caused Mahaffey deep chagrin. But the rangers favored endurance in horses above racing speed. Their trails were long and the record of the service was that it never failed. The lean rider was reloading his Winchester. Mahaffey shot with more haste than judgment. His bullets skipped along the dusty road. The third man was more dangerous. His lead whipped up the dust behind Wade. He was shooting to cripple Blackie.
The horse bore a charmed life. In less than two miles he doubled the hundred rods between him and the rangers. He grew hot and settled
into his swiftest, a pace that blurred the sides of the road in Wade’s sight. In a desperate flight Blackie could hold that gait a long while without killing himself. He knew what depended on him and the fighting heart of his racing sire throbbed in him. Farther and farther he drew away. Mahaffey ceased to waste more ammunition. The time came when a third ranger gave up shooting, but still came tearing on at the top speed of his mustang. It was the lean rider on the buckskin that Blackie had to beat. This ranger gradually fell back. He was already beaten, except for that rifle.
Wade felt something wet and hot trickling down his left arm. Blood! He experienced no pain. Could that blood come from the wound in his head? Changing the bridle over to his left hand he felt his arm. He had been shot through that arm without knowing it. The bone was still intact. A gloom descended upon him. Were they to kill him after all? How implacable these rangers! Something—perhaps justice and right, gave them that unswerving ruthlessness.
Blackie, with his magnificent stride, ran almost out of range of the relentless pursuer. Only a few more rods! The lean rider was aiming high. His bullets, almost spent, no longer whipped up the spiteful swirls of dust. Then almost at the moment of victory one of those missiles caught Blackie somewhere in the flank. He broke and plunged, then recovered to go on.
“Oh hell!” cursed Wade, frantically, feeling the change of muscular rhythm in the horse. Once more Wade’s deadly wrath flamed up, not for himself but for his faithful horse. If Blackie fell, Wade would be right back where he had been under the elm, when his father’s poignant revelation had saved Mahaffey’s life. Wade reached down to jerk the Winchester from its sheath. Yet somehow he did not give up. A nameless feeling, more than hope, would not die.
But Blackie did not go down. He recovered his stride enough to increase the advantage he had gained until he was out of range. That appeared to be his limit. That he held. Wade had no way to ascertain where Blackie had been hit or how serious it was. No blood showed on his flanks. Certainly no bone had been touched for the home was running hard, still fast enough to keep the lead.
“Oh, Blackie—you grand horse!” cried Wade, huskily, as the fever of rage passed. He had loved many horses, but all that he had felt was little to what Blackie inspired. Once more Wade attended to the road ahead, and the hour, and his pursuers.
The road was now wide, bare of grass, thickly packed with tracks of hoofs and wheels. He had come into the main artery of travel west. A wagon train had left those fresh marks. It could not be far ahead. The last rays of the setting sun flushed rough heights of land to the fore.
Behind Wade, a half mile or less on the road, came Mahaffey and his two rangers, and about a like distance behind them galloped the other three.
For miles then the race held that way, with the edge wearing off the speed of the ranger’s mustangs and Blackie slackening perceptibly.
The afterglow of sunset failed. Twilight crept out of the breaks of rough land ahead. Wade’s hope revived. Blackie must have sustained only a superficial flesh wound. Night was near at hand. Wade resisted a feeling that he should swerve off the road, find cover in one of the many rugged ravines yawning black from the level of prairie, and after nightfall work southward. But before he yielded to it the road entered a pass with steep gravelly banks. It would be time enough when he got through here.
He kept on, trying not to believe that Blackie had broken his gait again. But soon Wade had to credit his senses. The horse was laboring. Gathering darkness favored Wade as well as the widening of the pass into a steep-walled gorge with clumps of trees and thickets on each side of the road. Water gleamed in the gloom under the left wall. If overtaken, Wade saw that he might hide, but he could no longer climb out. It might develop that he should have climbed out before. The rangers would be gaining now. Another straight stretch of road would betray his plight to them.
It came, traversing a wide amphitheatre with unscalable walls and scanty timber, through which the road ran straight toward what might be a gateway into open country or a still narrower pocket.
Wade had no choice. As Blackie thundered on with weakening stride, Wade kept looking back. When he saw the rangers emerge from the pass, much closer to him, and heard their yells, a coolness of despair settled down upon him. At the worst, he could only die and he would not die submissively. Only he would exhaust every possible chance before turning at bay.
The thoroughbred under Wade would go on till his heart cracked. But Wade began to pull him, intending to leave the saddle before being shot out of it. A last time he looked back. He could make out the group of dark riders against a pale skyline. They were within easy rifle shot of him, but he calculated that the black shadows in front of him made him invisible to them. Through the trees ahead he imagined he saw a pin-point of light. The road turned, a dim lane between trees close to the looming walls. He could elude his pursuers on foot.
Wade hauled Blackie off the road, and leaping down he gave the noble heaving horse a last pat, and broke into a run. He soon got out of the trees into another open space. Fleeing across this, Wade gained a thin line of brush. Pausing to pick his way he heard the pound of hoofs behind and excited shouts of men. The rangers had found Blackie.
“Spread out! Ride him down! ” roared the inexorable Mahaffey.
Wade crouched there like a beast cornered. His chest heaved and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. The rangers would soon be upon him. Spread across that narrow canyon, they could drive a rabbit out of its covert. The instinctive drawing of hi9 gun was a sign that Wade had all but abandoned hope. Against a rage of despair he ran on.
The canyon boxed. A bulging wall drove him into the road. It made another bend. When Wade got around it he heard the crashings of brush not far behind.
Suddenly the walls appeared to fall away on each side. That box had been a gateway into another oval. Rounding a thicket into a glade he came upon horses that startled him so he nearly dropped. They were riderless. Snorting, they thumped away. Hobbled! Then he saw lights beyond a fringe of trees. Camp fires! His distraught mind received the sensations and groped for their meaning. He had run squarely into the wagon train that had been ahead of him on this road and which he had forgotten. It had halted for the night, surely blocked his escape. Still he went on, swerving to the left, hoping to get by under cover of the wall. He passed horses, oxen, canvas-covered wagons, always keeping himself behind the fringe of trees. Beyond this appeared an open space bright with fires.
Wade bent low and glided from tree to tree, making for the darkest place. At last he crawled to the edge of some bushes and lay still, burning hot, his heart bursting, dripping wet with sweat, his strength and endurance not equal to his spirit. He strove to control his whistling breath. In a moment more he moved on and peeped out.
A little tent had been pitched in the open not twenty feet from where Wade crouched. Beside it a girl knelt, placing sticks upon a camp fire that had begun to blaze. She was humming a tune. Her tent sat somewhat apart from a great prairie schooner, beyond which blazed the fires of a big caravan. Out there sounded a merry hum of voices. He saw men and women busy around camp fires; he smelled smoke and the fragrance of frying ham. All the way across this space bright fires blocked Wade’s escape. He could not hope to pass unobserved, but he would have to take the risk.
Wade stood up, swallowing hard. It was the end. He felt terrible bitterness of regret that he had not stayed back to die fighting with his father. Then an insupportable memory crushed back his weakness. While he lived there was a chance. Suddenly his glance came back to the girl.
She stood up in the light of her fire, a grown girl, slender and dark. The instinct that had actuated Wade when he gripped his gun swayed him now.
He strode out to confront her.
“Girl—for God’s sake—hide me!” he panted.
She recoiled, her big dark eyes flaring with fright. They took in Wade’s white, blood-streaked face, and the dripping hand he held out beseechingly. But she did not scream.
“Who are you?” she whispered, in sudden excitement.
“I’m a—fugitive,” he panted. “Rangers after me. . . . They’ve shot me—twice. . . . They’re close—on my trail. . . . They’ll kill me! . . . For mercy’s sake—hide me!”
She stared at him as if fascinated. Her wide dark eyes quickened to dispel the fright.
At that instant a commotion broke out in the camp, caused by pound of hoofs and shout of men.
“Who comes there?” yelled a man, no doubt the leader of the caravan.
“Mahaffey’s Rangers,” came the booming reply from beyond the trees.
“What you want?”
“We’re runnin’ down an outlaw. He’s heah. Just fell off his hawse—shot bad. Saddle all bloody. Look sharp, you—campers! . . . Ride men—he cain’t get away. Ride him down!”
The girl darted to her tent. “Quick! Hide in here,” she whispered opening the flaps.
Wade leaped to fall inside. She slipped in after him and drawing the flaps close she peeped out.
CHAPTER FOUR
WADE sank down on a soft bed of blankets. The awful clamp around his heart eased its icy grip. Against the light of the fire outside he saw the profile of the girl as she peered out. Pounding of hoofs, babel of voices, shrill whistles resounded.
“They’ve ridden on,” whispered the girl, turning to Wade. “That ranger, Captain Mahaffey, is my uncle!”
“They’ll come—back,” he panted. “Your—uncle?”
She watched and listened again at the aperture, during which few moments Wade recovered his breath. The stitch in his side pierced like a blade. Shadows of flames flickered on the tent. The fire outside crackled. The clip-clop of trotting horses lessened in volume, and also the shouts. Only the steady hum of talking men continued.
“What are—they doing?” asked Wade, huskily.
“Riding to and fro—everywhere,” she replied, the dark velvet brightness of her eyes strained to perceive objects at a distance.