第65章
He leaned a little until he could catch the sound of the breathing, big, steady draughts with comfortable intervals between.He could run like that all day, it seemed, and Whistling Dan ran his fingers luxuriously down the shining neck.Instantly the head tossed up, and a short whinney whipped back to him like a question.Just before them the Morgan Hills jutted up, like stiff mud chopped by the tread of giants."Now, partner," murmured Barry, "show 'em what you can do! Jest lengthen out a bit."The steady breeze from the running sharpened into a gale, whisking about his face; there was no longer the wave-like rock of that swinging gallup but a smooth, swift succession of impulses.Rocks, shrubs darted past him, and he felt a gradual settling of the horse beneath him as the strides lengthened, From behind a yell of dismay, and with a backward glance he saw every man of the posse leaning forward and swinging his quirt.An instant later half a dozen of the ragged little hills closed between them.
Once fairly into the heart of the Morgans, he called the stallion back from the racing stride to a long canter, and from the gallop to a rapid trot, for in this broken country it was wearing on an animal to maintain a lope up hill and down the quick, jerking falls.The cowpuncher hates the trot, for his ponies are not built for it, but the deep play of Satan's fetlock joints broke the hard impacts; his gait now was hardly more jarring than the flow of the single-foot in an ordinary animal.
Black Bart, who had been running directly under the nose of the stallion, now skirted away in the lead.Here and there he twisted among the gullies at a racing clip, his head high, and always he picked out the smoothest ground, the easiest rise, the gentlest descent which lay more or less straight in the line of his master's flight.It cut down the work of the stallion by half to have this swift, sure scout run before and point out the path, yet it was stiff labor at the best and Barry was glad when he came on the hard gravel of an old creek bed cutting at right angels to his course.
From the first he had intended to run towards the Morgans only to cover the true direction of his flight, and now, since the posse was hopelessly left behind him, well out of hearing, he rode Satan into the middle of the creek bed and swung him north.
It was bad going for a horse carrying a rider, and even the catlike certainty of Satan's tread could not avoid sharp edges here and there that might cut his hoofs.So Barry leaped to the ground and ran at full speed down the bed.Behind him Satan followed, his ears pricked uneasily, and Black Bart, at a signal from the master, dropped back and remained at the first bend of the old, empty stream.In a moment they wound out of sight even of Bart, but Barry kept steadily on.It would take a magnifying glass to read his trail over those rocks.
He had covered a mile, perhaps, when Bart came scurrying again and leaped joyously around the master.
"They've hit the creek, eh?" said Whistling Dan."Well, they'll mill around a while and like as not they'll run a course south to pick me up agin."He gestured toward the side, and as soon as Satan stood on the good going once more, Barry swung into the saddle and headed straight back west.No doubt the posse would ride up and down the creek bed until they found his trail turning back, but they would lose precious minutes picking it up, and in the meantime he would be far, far away toward the ford of Tucker Creek.Then, clearly, but no louder than the snapping of a dry twig near his ear, he heard the report of a revolver and it spoke to him of many things as the baffled posse rode up and down the creek bed hunting for the direction of his escape.Some one had fired that shot to relieve his anger.
He neither spoke to Satan nor struck him, but there was a slight leaning forward, an imperceptible flexing of the leg muscles, and in response the black sprang again into the swift trot which sent him gliding over the ground, and twisting back and forth among the sharp-sided gullies with a movement as smooth as the run of the wolf-dog, which once again raced ahead.
When they came out in view of the rolling plain Barry stopped again and glanced to the west and the north, while Black Bart ran to the top of the nearest hill and looked back, an ever vigilant outpost.To the north lay the fordable streams near Caswell City, and that way was perfect safety, it seemed.Not perfect, perhaps, for Barry knew nothing of the telephones by which the little bald headed clerk at the sheriff's office was rousing the countryside, but if he struck toward Caswell City from the Morgans, there was not a chance in ten that scouts would catch him at the river which was fordable for mile after mile.
That way, then, lay the easiest escape, but it meant a long detour out of the shortest course, which struck almost exactly west, skirting dangerously close to Rickett.But, as Billy had presupposed, it was the very danger which lured the fugitive.Behind him, entangled in the gullies of the bad-lands, were the fifteen best men of the mountain-desert.In front of him lay nothing except the mind of Billy the clerk.But how could he know that?
Once again he swayed a little forward and this time the stallion swung at 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 the posse came out from the Morgan Hills on his back trail.