“Annixter,” he shouted, and again, rolling his sunken eyes, “Annixter, Annixter!”
“Here, here,” cried Annixter.
The other turned, levelling his pistol.
“Give me a horse, give me a horse, quick, do you hear? Give me a horse, or I’ll shoot.”
“Steady, steady. That won’t do. You know me, Dyke. We’re friends here.”
The other lowered his weapon.
“I know, I know,” he panted. “I’d forgotten. I’m unstrung, Mr. Annixter, and I’m running for my life. They’re not ten minutes behind me.”
“Come on, come on,” shouted Annixter, dashing stablewards, his suspenders flying.
“Here’s a horse.”
“Mine?” exclaimed Presley. “He wouldn’t carry you a mile.”
Annixter was already far ahead, trumpeting orders.
“The buckskin,” he yelled. “Get her out, Billy. Where’s the stableman? Get out that buckskin. Get out that saddle.”
Then followed minutes of furious haste, Presley, Annixter, Billy the stableman, and Dyke himself, darting hither and thither about the yellow mare, buckling, strapping, cinching, their lips pale, their fingers trembling with excitement.
“Want anything to eat?” Annixter’s head was under the saddle flap as he tore at the cinch. “Want anything to eat? Want any money? Want a gun?”
“Water,” returned Dyke. “They’ve watched every spring. I’m killed with thirst.”
“There’s the hydrant. Quick now.”
“I got as far as the Kern River, but they turned me back,” he said between breaths as he drank.
“Don’t stop to talk.”
“My mother, and the little tad—”
“I’m taking care of them. They’re stopping with me.”
Here?
“You won’t see ’em; by the Lord, you won’t. You’ll get away. Where’s that back cinch strap, Billy? God damn it, are you going to let him be shot before he can get away? Now, Dyke, up you go. She’ll kill herself running before they can catch you.”
“God bless you, Annixter. Where’s the little tad? Is she well, Annixter, and the mother? Tell them—”
“Yes, yes, yes. All clear, Pres? Let her have her own gait, Dyke. You’re on the best horse in the county now. Let go her head, Billy. Now, Dyke—shake hands? You bet I will. That’s all right. Yes, God bless you. Let her go. You’re off.”
Answering the goad of the spur, and already quivering with the excitement of the men who surrounded her, the buckskin cleared the stable-corral in two leaps; then, gathering her legs under her, her head low, her neck stretched out, swung into the road from out the driveway disappearing in a blur of dust.
With the agility of a monkey, young Vacca swung himself into the framework of the artesian well, clambering aloft to its very top. He swept the country with a glance.
“Well?” demanded Annixter from the ground. The others cocked their heads to listen.
“I see him; I see him!” shouted Vacca. “He’s going like the devil. He’s headed for Guadalajara.”
“Look back, up the road, toward the Mission. Anything there?”
The answer came down in a shout of apprehension.
“There’s a party of men. Three or four—on horseback. There’s dogs with ’em. They’re coming this way. Oh, I can hear the dogs. And, say, oh, say, there’s another party coming down the Lower Road, going towards Guadalajara, too. They got guns. I can see the shine of the barrels. And, oh, Lord, say, there’s three more men on horses coming down on the jump from the hills on the Los Muertos stock range. They’re making towards Guadalajara. And I can hear the courthouse bell in Bonneville ringing. Say, the whole county is up.”
As young Vacca slid down to the ground, two small black-and-tan hounds, with flapping ears and lolling tongues, loped into view on the road in front of the house. They were grey with dust, their noses were to the ground. At the gate where Dyke had turned into the ranch house grounds, they halted in confusion a moment. One started to follow the highwayman’s trail towards the stable corral, but the other, quartering over the road with lightning swiftness, suddenly picked up the new scent leading on towards Guadalajara. He tossed his head in the air, and Presley abruptly shut his hands over his ears.
Ah, that terrible cry! deep-toned, reverberating like the bourdon of a great bell. It was the trackers exulting on the trail of the pursued, the prolonged, raucous howl, eager, ominous, vibrating with the alarm of the tocsin, sullen with the heavy muffling note of death. But close upon the bay of the hounds, came the gallop of horses. Five men, their eyes upon the hounds, their rifles across their pommels, their horses reeking and black with sweat, swept by in a storm of dust, glinting hoofs, and streaming manes.
“That was Delaney’s gang,” exclaimed Annixter. “I saw him.”
“The other was that chap Christian,” said Vacca, “S. Behrman’s cousin. He had two deputies with him; and the chap in the white slouch hat was the sheriff from Visalia.”
“By the Lord, they aren’t far behind,” declared Annixter.
As the men turned towards the house again they saw Hilma and Mrs. Dyke in the doorway of the little house where the latter lived. They were looking out, bewildered, ignorant of what had happened. But on the porch of the Ranch house itself, alone, forgotten in the excitement, Sidney—the little tad—stood, with pale face and serious, wide-open eyes. She had seen everything, and had understood. She said nothing. Her head inclined towards the roadway, she listened to the faint and distant baying of the dogs.
Dyke thundered across the railway tracks by the depot at Guadalajara not five minutes ahead of his pursuers. Luck seemed to have deserted him. The station, usually so quiet, was now occupied by the crew of a freight train that lay on the down track; while on the up line, near at hand and headed in the same direction, was a detached locomotive, whose engineer and fireman recognised him, he was sure, as the buckskin leaped across the rails.
He had had no time to formulate a plan since that morning, when, tortured with thirst, he had ventured near the spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, on Quien Sabe, and had all but fallen into the
