Chapter XXX. The Morgan Hills
Once out of Rickett, Barry pulled the stallion back to an easy canter.He had camped during the latter part of the night near the town andridden in in the morning, so that Satan was full of running. He rebellednow against this easy pace, and tossed his head with impatience. No curbrestrained him, not even a bit; the light hackamore could not have heldhim for an instant, but the voice of the rider kept him in hand. Now,out of Rickett's one street, came the thing for which Barry had waited,and delayed his course--a scudding dust cloud. On the top of a rise ofground he brought Satan to a halt and looked back, though Black Bart ranin a circle around him, and whined anxiously. Bart knew that they shouldbe running; there was no good in that ragged dust-cloud. Finally he satdown on his haunches and looked his master in the face, quivering witheagerness. The posse came closer, at the rate of a racing horse, andnear at hand the tufts of dust which tossed up above and behind theriders dissolved, and Whistling Dan made them out clearly, and moreclearly.
For one form he looked above all, a big man who rode somewhat slanting;but Vic Gregg was not among the crowd, and for the rest, Barry had nowish to come within range of their harm. The revolver at his side, therifle in the case, were for the seventh man who must die for Grey Molly.These who followed him mattered nothing--except that he must not comewithin their reach. He studied them calmly as they swept nearer, fifteenchosen men as he could tell by their riding, on fifteen choice horsesas he could tell by their gait. If they pushed him into a corner--well,five men were odds indeed, yet he would not have given them a thought;ten men made it a grim affair, but still he might have taken a chance;however, fifteen men made a battle suicide--he simply must not letthem corner him. Particularly fifteen such men as these, for in themountain-desert where all men are raised gun in hand, these were thequickest and the surest marksmen. Each one of them had struck thatelusive white ball in motion, and each had done it with a revolver. Whatcould they do with a rifle?
That thought might have sent him rushing Satan down the farther slope,but instead, he raised his head a little more and began to whistlesoftly to himself. Satan locked an ear back to listen; Black Bart rosewith a muffled growl. The posse rode in clear view now, and at theirhead was a tall, lean man with the sun glinting now and again on hisyellow moustaches. He threw out his arm and the posse scattered towardsthe left. Obviously he was the accepted leader, and indeed few men inthe mountain-desert would not willingly have followed Mark Retherton.Another gesture from Retherton, and at once a dozen guns gleaned, and adozen bullets whizzed perilously close to Barry, then the reports camebarking up to him; he was just a little out of range.
Still he lingered for a moment before he turned Satan reluctantly, itseemed, and started him down the far slope, straightaway for the MorganHills as old Billy had prophesied. It would be no exercise canter evenfor Satan, for the horses which followed were rare of their kind, andthe western horse at the worst has manifold fine points. His ancestor isthe Barb or the Arab which the Spaniards brought with them to Mexico andthe descendants of that finest of equine bloods made up the wild herdswhich soon roamed the mountain-desert to the north. Long famines ofwinter, hot deserts in summer, changed their appearance. Their headsgrew lumpier, their necks more scraggy, their croups more slanting,their legs shorter; but their hoofs grew denser, hardier, their shortercoupling gave them greater weight-carrying possibilities, the stoutbones and the clean lines of their legs meant speed, and above all theykept the stout heart of the thoroughbred and they gained more than this,an indomitable, bulldog persistence. The cheapest Western cow-pony maylook like the cartoon of a horse, but he has points which a judge willnote, and he will run a picture horse to death in three days.
Such were the horses which took the trail of Satan and they were chosenspecimens of their kind. Up the slope they stormed and there went Satanskimming across the hollow beneath them. Their blood was his blood,their courage his courage, their endurance his endurance. The differencebetween them was the difference between the factory machine and the handmade work of art. From his pasterns to his withers, from his hoofs tohis croup every muscle was perfectly designed and perfectly placed forspeed, tireless running; every bone was the maximum of lightness andstrength combined. A feather bloom on a steady wind, such was the gaitof Satan.
Down the hollow the posse thundered, and up the farther slope, and stillthe black slipped away from them until Mark Retherton cursed deeply tohimself.
"Don't race your hosses, boys," he shouted. "Keep 'em in hand. Thatdevil is playing with us."
As a result, they checked their mounts to merely a fast gallup, andBarry, looking back, laughed softly with understanding. Far differentthe laborious pounding of the posse and the light stretch of Satanbeneath him. He leaned a little until he could catch the sound of thebreathing, big, steady draughts with comfortable intervals between.He could run like that all day, it seemed, and Whistling Dan ran hisfingers luxuriously down the shining neck. Instantly the head tossedup, and a short whinney whipped back to him like a question. Just beforethem the Morgan Hills jutted up, like stiff mud chopped by the tread ofgiants. "Now, partner," murmured Barry, "show 'em what you can do! Jestlengthen out a bit."
The steady breeze from the running sharpened into a gale, whisking abouthis face; there was no longer the wave-like rock of that swinging gallupbut a smooth, swift succession of impulses. Rocks, shrubs darted pasthim, and he felt a gradual settling of the horse beneath him as thestrides lengthened, From behind a yell of dismay, and with a backwardglance he saw every man of the posse leaning forward and swinging hisquirt. An instant later half a dozen of the ragged little hills closedbetween them.
Once fairly into the heart of the Morgans, he called the stallion backfrom the racing stride to a long canter, and from the gallop to a rapidtrot, for in this broken country it was wearing on an animal to maintaina lope up hill and down the quick, jerking falls. The cowpuncher hatesthe trot, for his ponies are not built for it, but the deep play ofSatan's fetlock joints broke the hard impacts; his gait now was hardlymore jarring than the flow of the single-foot in an ordinary animal.
Black Bart, who had been running directly under the nose of thestallion, now skirted away in the lead. Here and there he twisted amongthe gullies at a racing clip, his head high, and always he picked outthe smoothest ground, the easiest rise, the gentlest descent which laymore or less straight in the line of his master's flight. It cut downthe work of the stallion by half to have this swift, sure scout runbefore and point out the path, yet it was stiff labor at the best andBarry was glad when he came on the hard gravel of an old creek bedcutting at right angels to his course.
From the first he had intended to run towards the Morgans only tocover the true direction of his flight, and now, since the posse washopelessly left behind him, well out of hearing, he rode Satan into themiddle of the creek bed and swung him north.
It was bad going for a horse carrying a rider, and even the catlikecertainty of Satan's tread could not avoid sharp edges here and therethat might cut his hoofs. So Barry leaped to the ground and ran atfull speed down the bed. Behind him Satan followed, his ears prickeduneasily, and Black Bart, at a signal from the master, dropped back andremained at the first bend of the old, empty stream. In a moment theywound out of sight even of Bart, but Barry kept steadily on. It wouldtake a magnifying glass to read his trail over those rocks.
He had covered a mile, perhaps, when Bart came scurrying again andleaped joyously around the master.
"They've hit the creek, eh?" said Whistling Dan. "Well, they'll millaround a while and like as not they'll run a course south to pick me upagin."
He gestured toward the side, and as soon as Satan stood on the goodgoing once more, Barry swung into the saddle and headed straight backwest. No doubt the posse would ride up and down the creek bed untilthey found his trail turning back, but they would lose precious minutespicking it up, and in the meantime he would be far, far away toward theford of Tucker Creek. Then, clearly, but no lo
uder than the snapping ofa dry twig near his ear, he heard the report of a revolver and it spoketo him of many things as the baffled posse rode up and down the creekbed hunting for the direction of his escape. Some one had fired thatshot to relieve his anger.
He neither spoke to Satan nor struck him, but there was a slight leaningforward, an imperceptible flexing of the leg muscles, and in responsethe black sprang again into the swift trot which sent him gliding overthe ground, and twisting back and forth among the sharp-sided gullieswith a movement as smooth as the run of the wolf-dog, which once againraced ahead.
When they came out in view of the rolling plain Barry stopped again andglanced to the west and the north, while Black Bart ran to the top ofthe nearest hill and looked back, an ever vigilant outpost. To the northlay the fordable streams near Caswell City, and that way was perfectsafety, it seemed. Not perfect, perhaps, for Barry knew nothing of thetelephones by which the little bald headed clerk at the sheriff's officewas rousing the countryside, but if he struck toward Caswell City fromthe Morgans, there was not a chance in ten that scouts would catch himat the river which was fordable for mile after mile.
That way, then, lay the easiest escape, but it meant a long detourout of the shortest course, which struck almost exactly west, skirtingdangerously close to Rickett. But, as Billy had presupposed, it wasthe very danger which lured the fugitive. Behind him, entangled inthe gullies of the bad-lands, were the fifteen best men of themountain-desert. In front of him lay nothing except the mind of Billythe clerk. But how could he know that?
Once again he swayed a little forward and this time the stallion swungat once into his ranging gallop, then verged into a half-racing gait,for Barry wished to get out of sight among the rolling ground before theposse came out from the Morgan Hills on his back trail.