“Here’s the weak spot,” said Roger Lincoln, “and it’s the very spot that I thought would be strong.”
He turned with an impatient exclamation and stared at Torridon. One would have thought that he was angry with him, and Torridon said feebly: “We started with Nancy on the best pony we could get, Roger. The pinto went lame, and Ashur has been carrying us both.”
“I could see that,” Roger Lincoln said tersely. “You,” he added sharply to the girl, “get on Comanche. Comanche, stand up!”
Out of the grass rose the famous silver mare, and beside her a tall brown gelding, the very make of speed—lean-headed, long of neck, with shoulders that promised ample power and a deep barrel—sure token of wind and heart.
“Take the brown,” said Lincoln to Torridon, “and lead Ashur. We have to cool him out, and it won’t do to let him stand.”
“And what will you do, Roger?”
“I’ll run.”
Nancy was about to protest, but Torridon himself silenced her.
“Lincoln knows best,” he said. “Do as he says.”
He helped her into the saddle. Roger Lincoln already was running lightly before them at a stride and pace that seemed to show that he intended a long jaunt. And he bore due north.
As Torridon sprang into the saddle on the gelding, he heard Nancy murmuring: “He’s furiously angry, Paul. What have we done?”
“He’s not angry, I hope,” said the boy. “But he’s thinking hard about how he can get us out of this trouble. There’s nothing else in his mind. Don’t doubt Roger Lincoln. Doubt me, sooner.”
He drew on the lead rope, and Ashur broke into a stumbling trot. He was very far spent indeed, with flagging ears and dull eyes. And as Torridon rode, he kept well turned in the saddle and talked continually to the great black.
The last of life seemed to be flickering in the glazing eyes of the stallion, but under the voice of his master that light grew brighter in pulses. The jog trot, also, seemed better for him than merely standing. But still he was very far done, and his hoofs struck the ground, shambling and uncertain, as though they moved by a volition of their own and without the will of the horse. And it seemed to Torridon, as he looked back at the fine head of the horse, that, rather than abandon Ashur, he would stay behind and fight the Cheyennes, single-handed.
The Indians, in the meantime, had spread far and wide across the plain, their five figures gradually dying in the dusk of the day, while Roger Lincoln still ran before Torridon and the girl with a tireless step.
They went on for nearly an hour. The dusk thickened. The last pale glow finished in the west, and then there was darkness, utter and absolute.
Roger Lincoln whirled and stopped the cavalcade. “How is Ashur?” was his first question.
“Tired, tired, Roger. He shambles like a cow.”
The scout spent a moment at the side of the stallion and then said briefly: “He’s only half a step from a dead horse. Here’s a blanket on the ground. Can you make him lie on that?”
The stallion obeyed. Even in the darkness, Torridon could see the knees of Ashur shake violently as his weight came heavily on them.
Lincoln flung another robe over the big black. “Do you know how to rub down a horse, Paul?”
“I know.”
“Work on his shoulders and chest. I’ll take care of the hindquarters. You, Nancy, take the head. Rub with a wisp of that grass. We have to keep his circulation going.”
He made his own two horses lie down. He had chosen a little depression in the surface of the level prairie. That faint declination of the ground and the height of the grass that grew thickly around it gave them some shelter if the Indians should attempt to spot them against the skyline of the stars. But, at the same time, it allowed the Cheyennes to creep up unobserved in turn. In a way, they had blinded themselves and were now trusting to sheer chance to keep them out of the way of those keen hunters.
But even Nancy knew well enough what this work meant. With two horses they never could escape from those bloodhounds of the plains. With Ashur once again on his feet and capable of his matchless gallop, they had at least a fighting chance.
So all three fell to work in silence, only broken when Roger Lincoln, pausing to allow his aching arms a chance of recuperation, murmured: “When I remember how Ashur pitched me into the middle of the sky . . . and then tried to catch me with his teeth . . .” He laughed softly. And then he added: “But that shaking up was worthwhile. I never would have known you, Paul, except for it.”
This was all he said by way of welcoming them. Nancy, from the first, might have been a figure of wood to him, so little attention did he pay to her, but gradually she came to understand. All the heart of that hero of the frontier was bent upon the great task before him. He had no time for amenities. But all the more strongly she began to feel that every drop of blood in his veins was given to the task he had undertaken. He would die most willingly to do the thing he had in hand.
“Hush,” whispered Roger Lincoln suddenly. It was the ghost of a hiss, rather than a word.
They stopped working. Dimly Torridon saw Lincoln reach for his rifle and gradually bring it into position. He himself drew his pistol. They waited endless moments with thundering hearts. Then something stirred through the grass, and against the stars, not ten yards from them, Torridon saw two riders looming, the faint night light glistening on their balanced rifles. But when he raised his pistol, a hand of iron gripped his arm. He waited. For an eternity, the two Indians sat their horses side-by-side. Torridon could see them turning their heads. They were so near that he could hear the swish of the rising wind through the tails of their horses. And he prayed with all his might that none of the horses might make a sound, a snort, or the least noise of tearing at the grass.
That prayer was granted. Softly as they had come, the pair of ghostly forms moved away again. And at an almost mute signal, the fugitives resumed their work on the stallion.
It seemed to Torridon’s trembling touch that the flabby texture of the shoulder muscles had been changing—that the old feeling, like cables of India rubber, was beginning to return to them.
He whispered softly to Roger Lincoln: “I think Ashur could go on now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Almost.”
“Make sure if you can.”
Torridon whispered.
At the mere hiss of sound, the black stallion jerked up his head from the hands of Nancy. “Yes!” Torridon said joyously.
They stood back, and, at Torridon’s murmured command, the stallion rose. The other two horses got up, unbidden, and it seemed now to Paul Torridon that they had risen from the warm, secure darkness of the grass to stand among the very stars. Surely someone of those prowling Cheyennes could not fail to see them.
Roger Lincoln was speaking quietly: “The whole crew of Cheyennes are spilled around us over the plain. They may stumble on us in the dark, and, if they do, nothing can keep them from cutting our throats. I think those red men see in the dark, like cats. But, in the meantime, they’re spreading their nets for us. I propose to head back straight south, march at a walk for a couple of hours, and then swing toward the west for an hour, then back again toward the north. We may be running our heads into the lion’s mouth. If you don’t agree to this, we’ll try something else. But I think that by this time you’d find more of them to the north than to the south.”
It seemed almost rashly bold counsel to Torridon, but he dared not question the wisdom of Roger Lincoln, so often proved—and in times all as perilous as this one. He merely murmured to Nancy: “Have you strength to go on?”