It was enough to make his heart leap. Frantically he set about saddling and bridling, his fingers stumbling with nervous haste. But he would not allow himself the dangerous privilege of another glance until he was finally in the saddle on the mare. Ashur should be reserved for the last emergency.
In that saddle, however, when he looked again to the east, he saw that danger was rapidly sweeping toward him. A dozen or more Indians, not half a mile away, were galloping toward him. They did not come in one body, but in groups of two or three, widely separated, and strung out in a line from north to south, as though they were sweeping the plains with a great net to catch what fish they could.
He turned the head of his horse due west and sent the mare into a strong gallop. Ashur followed beside her with his enormous stride. There was no need to keep a lead rope on him. By word of mouth he could be as effectually controlled as by a bridle.
But it was only at a pace little short of her full speed that Comanche could begin to drop the wild riders behind, and that by slow degrees. The Cheyennes—he had no doubt that it was they—moved at a terrific pace, punishing their mounts remorselessly, for each warrior had three or four animals in reserve, and the horse herd was brought up in the rear by active boys, who flogged the tired ones up to the company of their fresher brothers.
Still they could not quite manage the rate of Comanche. The fine mare straightened to her work, and the Indians fell gradually off, so that Torridon felt that he could safely swing toward the north again without any danger of being caught by the wing of the enemy in that direction.
To the north he swerved, therefore, but, as he turned the head of Comanche in the new direction, he heard a sound like the screeching of ten devils. And to the west, not a hundred yards away, out of the very bosom of the plain, as it were, upstarted a full score of Cheyennes, with the formidable figure of Standing Bull prominent in the front rank. They charged down at him, yelling like so many fiends, at the full speed of their horses, the heads of the ponies shaken by their fierce efforts.
Torridon turned dumb with exquisite fear. He could call on the gray mare, but the touch of his knee and the grinding of his heel into her tender flank were enough to make her swerve and bolt back.
A bullet hummed past his head. And, as he flattened himself along the back of the horse, he heard a voice of thunder, distinct above the rushing of the hoofs, the whistling of the wind at his ears.
“Stop, White Thunder! Stop, or we will catch you with bullets! Stop, and you are safe as a brother in our hands!”
He would not stop. He had freedom, and the return to his own kind and sweet Nancy Brett all before him. Death was not so terrible as the loss of such treasures. Desperately he rode. But he could not keep on in this direction.
Straight before him the line of riders from the east was storming, drawing toward him in a group now. He could see the flogging of their arms, as they punished their horses. Their wild whoops seemed to check the pulsation of his heart.
Like a fool he had ridden into this open trap. They simply had driven him into the lion’s mouth from one side, while the other side waited to catch him. They were brushing him up, as a housewife brushes dust from the floor into a pan. He groaned with rage as well as terror.
Then he drove Comanche to the due north, or a little east of it. She had gone well before. But her speed now startled even her rider.
He thought that he could detect a note of rage rather than triumph in the shouting behind him. Certainly the noise was growing dimmer. With unflagging speed she kept on, running straight and true.
There were two Indians on the right flank of the Cheyennes who were rushing at him from the east. Those were the two on whom the greatest share of the burden of catching him must lie, now. With a falling heart he recognized in one of them that glorious young warrior, that peerless rider and rifleman, Rising Hawk. Like a bronze statue endowed with life he came, erect in the saddle, the rifle ready beneath his arm. His left hand was raised. He was shouting to Torridon to warn him to a halt, and the fugitive saw that he must play his last card now or lose the game forever.
He had Ashur running lightly beside him, turning his lordly head as though he scorned these men of the prairies. Now he drew the big horse closer with a single word. Shoulder by shoulder ran mare and stallion, and it was a simple thing to slip from one saddle to the next. It was a trick that he had practiced many and many a time before, and now his labor was well spent. He was on Ashur—and at his first call the big black leaped away from Comanche as though she had stumbled in full stride.
Like a human being afraid of being left behind, she whinnied with terror, but Ashur was leaving her with every stride. They were past Rising Hawk, now. Standing Bull’s party was far behind. Then Torridon heard the crashing of many rifles. Yet he did not hear the whistle of a single bullet. He wondered at it. Then, glancing aside, he saw Rising Hawk deliberately fire his weapon high into the air.
At last he understood. They would frighten him into surrender if they could, but they would not deliberately harm him. And, as that amazing knowledge came to him, Ashur swept him into a shallow draw just deep enough to shelter horse and rider. They raced a furious mile along its winding course, and when they left it again to bear straight north, Standing Bull and Rising Hawk and all the rest were hopelessly behind, and every moment they were being distanced more sadly. Even Comanche, with all her speed, and without a rider to burden her, was a full two hundred yards behind.
XIV
After the foolish manner in which he had allowed himself to be so nearly snared by the Cheyennes, Torridon lost his confidence. He felt no better than a boy, and an irresponsible one, at that. But two things struck him with a lasting wonder out of this adventure. The one was the blinding speed of Ashur—for never before had he seen it so tested—the other was that the Cheyennes had chosen to spare his life.
He did not try to deceive himself on that point. He had been in their hands, to all intents and purposes. If they wanted his scalp, it could have been theirs for the asking. The twenty rifles that had risen with Standing Bull to block his flight could have riddled him with bullets. But they wanted his life, not his death. And gravely, gravely did he wonder over this state of affairs.
He had the stallion and the mare to carry him, and he vowed that he would give them nothing but short halts for the next two days. Let the Cheyennes follow if they could. So he set his teeth and narrowed his eyes, and embarked upon two days of weary, continual labor and effort.
The weather broke before midday, but, though the sun came out bright and clear, the going was frightfully heavy under foot. The weight of it, however, was not all a disadvantage. He was able to get fresh meat on that account, for the antelope that at last he struck down with a lucky shot was kept in range only by the softness of the ground over which it raced. He paused to roast bits of the best of the flesh. He carried two large cuts of the antelope with him, and with them he could consider the food problem settled on that trail.
After that he voyaged through empty prairie until the fourth day out, when he struck into rolling ground, and in the distance to the north and the west there were tall mountains, dark with forests.
He came to a river, swift and mighty. When he first came to the bank, he was in time to see a drowned tree floating rapidly past and he knew that the stream was not fordable here. He would have to go higher up before it could be passed. So he turned to the left and went on for another two hours until he saw a canoe paddled in the flatter shallows of the stream by two men in frontier costume of deerskin, dark, almost, as Indians, but identified even in the distance by the sunburned paleness of their hair.