They wasted no time. The thing to do was either to drop Bull Hunter with a chance shot early in the game, or else to accept a long and exhausting chase, for the running powers of Diablo were well known. Therefore the moment they came in view they scattered, pitched their rifles to their shoulders, halted their horses and opened a close fire, but they found no easy target.
Diablo was running as Bull Hunter had taught him to run for the sport of it, taking the hardest course among the trees and dodging back and forth like a jack rabbit, in spite of his burden and his own great size. At that shuttle-like motion of the target the bullets flew wide. More than one of them sung perilously close to Hunter, but presently he reached denser forest, and the trees were a shield behind him.
At once he called Diablo back to an easy pace. He did not wish to wind the stallion in the first stages of the journey; moreover, the pursuers were not apt to try to outsprint the great black horse. They were more likely to trust to wearing him down on account of the weight of his rider.
In the meantime the hunt grew in number of voices behind him, and he could hear parties cutting to right and left, spreading out like a fan, so that he would have no chance to escape by doubling back, once the chase was fairly under way. By the uproar he guessed rightly that every man on the ranch had taken horse to join in the kill. That would be an easy way to win praise from Jack Hood, the sour old foreman, and money from Hal Dunbar. After the fall of Bull Hunter, Hal Dunbar would ride Diablo.
That thought made Hunter frown. He quickened the pace of the black, and so broke out of the forest which surrounded the ranch buildings, and came to the wide-rolling meadow lands. What he had suspected was true. The whole body of hunters was not sprinting their horses after him, but one section of four hard riders. Far to his left they were driving their mounts with quirt and spur, and the obvious plan was to send out one group after another, while the main body followed at a moderate pace behind and could come up to overtake the fugitive, when Diablo was worn down. It was, after all, the oldest form of ”jockeying.”
One word to Diablo, and he was stretched to full speed. And what speed it was! It had been many a week since Bull loosed the big stallion, and as the rush of wind cut into his face he marveled. Not Bull alone, but the whole body of the pursuers gave a shout of wonder, as they crashed out of the forest and saw Diablo sweeping away. He ran as though a lightweight jockey were on his back, and the leading group of riders shook their heads. But there was nothing for it but to ride their horses out.
There was Hal Dunbar shouting the order as he came out of the forest. He rode a big gray, strong enough to carry his weight, but, because of his strength, nearer to a draft horse than a runner, for Hal Dunbar, handsome of face and huge of limb, was as big as Bull Hunter himself, and only one horse in the mountain desert could have carried such bulk with speed, and that horse was the black stallion which now carried Hunter away to safety. Hal Dunbar, spurring in vain to keep up the pace, cursed his horse and Bull Hunter and his men and himself. At that moment he would have paid with the value of half his ranch for the possession of Diablo.
That change of ownership, whether to be accomplished by a bullet or money, was at least postponed. Diablo stepped away from the chase as though the others were standing till. Bull Hunter, glorying in the speed, let him run at his will for half a mile. Then he began to think and called him back to a smooth canter. Even that pace was safely holding the fastest of Dunbar’s men, and Dunbar himself was out of sight in the rear.
What ran in the mind of Bull Hunter was that, if every man on the Dunbar place had taken horse to follow him, the ranch house itself was left unprotected. It only remained to cut in behind them, and he could get back and see Mary Hood without danger of interruption - a thought that proved that, if Bull was stupid as a strategist, he had some tactical good sense.
But it was not altogether an easy thing to double back. The chase had spread out widely. Far to right and left he saw one little group after another topping the hills and dipping out of view into the hollows, until it seemed that a small army was following him.
They rode at a steady, hot pace that would enable them to take instant advantage of any mistake on the part of the fugitive. Not until they struck the mountains, certainly, would he have a chance to double back, and even in the mountains it would be nearly impossible.
Twice the ranchmen sprinted from the flanks in an attempt to come up in point-blank range before he could get Diablo away; twice he forestalled them. But how keenly he missed The Ghost now! The Ghost, who would have loafed behind and, ranging across the front of the line of the pursuers at a speed that made a mock of horseflesh, would have come to him like an arrow to report every fresh threat of danger! But there was no wolf dog. Neither was there a Pete Reeve who would have turned in the saddle and kept the pursuers far back with snap rifle shots. Two thirds of his strength was gone with them; what remained to him was not a large ability to plot, and the only trick he could think of was a childish one in its simplicity.
It consisted in increasing the pace of the black as they approached the foothills, cutting over to one side, as though he wished to reach a certain pass well ahead of the right flank of the cowpunchers; and then, having drawn them in that direction, trying to cut back across their whole front, as soon as he was behind the first screen of hills. It meant calling on Diablo for two bursts of speed, one as he went to the right, and a far greater one as he dashed to the left among the hills, across the whole front of the enemy, but Bull Hunter trusted implicitly to the stallion.
Two miles from the hills he altered his direction sharply to the right and let Diablo out, so that it seemed he was running hard to make the pass. The moment he did it the whole posse drew together and spurred hard, particularly on the right, to gain the pass before him. They might as well have tried to outfoot the wind. Diablo at three-quarters speed gained hand over hand; before the pass was reached the squad to the right drew up their horses and began to pump volley after volley toward the pass, in the hope of turning the fugitive.
Bull Hunter, by a very simple expedient, let them think that they had succeeded. He allowed himself to lurch far to the left in the saddle, like a man struck by a bullet, straightened slowly, and then turned his right arm dangling loosely, and shook his left fist at the posse. After that he turned Diablo toward the hills before him.
A prolonged yell of triumph came ringing and tingling through the air after him. They had winged their quarry, they felt, and the wounded Bull Hunter would do the natural thing and try to put as much country as possible between himself and his pursuers, so that he could dismount and tend to his wound. In this case he would drive the stallion straight across the range.
So they bunched in and followed in that imaginary line, while Hunter, as a matter of fact, as soon as he was behind the first screen of hills, veered the black sharply to the left and, bending far forward in the saddle, let Diablo run as he had never run before. The voice of the hunt rolled to him over the hills, nearer and nearer. He must not be seen and he must not be heard. He might, for all he knew, be in front of the very middle of the hunt. But he took the chance, and reaching a dense grove of young lodgepole pine, he wedged his way into them and waited.