The Asper
Ninety miles of ground, at least, had been covered by the black stallion, since he left Rickett that morning, yet when he galloped across the plain in full sight of Wilsonville there were plenty of witnesses who vowed that Satan ran like a colt frolicking over a pasture.Mark Retherton knew better, and the posse to a man felt the end was near.They changed saddles in a savage silence and went down the street out of town with a roar of racing hoofs.
And Barry too, as he watched them whip around the corner of the last house and streak across the fields, knew that the end of the ride was near.
Strength, wind and nerve were gone from Satan; his hoofs pounded the ground with the stamp of a plowhorse; his breath came in wheezes with a rattle toward the end; the tail no longer fluttered out straight behind.Yet when the master leaned and called he found something in his great heart with which to answer.A ghost of his old buoyancy came in his stride, the drooping head rose, one ear quivered up, and he ran against the challenge of those fresh ponies from Wilsonville.There were men who doubted it when the tale was told, but Mark Retherton swore to the truth of it.
Even then that desperate effort was failing.Not all the generous will in the heart of the stallion could give his legs the speed they needed; and he fell back by inches, by feet, by yards, toward the posse.They disdained their guns now, and kept them in the cases; for the game was theirs.
And then they noted an odd activity in the fugitive, who had slipped to one side and was fumbling at his cinches.They could not understand for a time, but presently the saddle came loose, the cinches flipped out, and the whole apparatus crashed to the ground.Nor was this all.The rider leaned forward and his hands worked on the head of his mount until the hackamore also came free and was tossed aside.To that thing fifteen good men and true swore the next day with strange oaths, and told how a man rode for his life on a horse that wore neither saddle nor bridle but ran obediently to voice and hand.
Every ounce counted, and there were other ounces to be spared.He was leaning again, to this side and then to that, and presently the posse rushed past the discarded riding-boots.
There lay the rifle in its case on the saddle far behind.And with the rifle remained all the fugitive's chances of fighting at long range.Now, following, came the heavy cartridge belt and the revolver with it.The very sombrero was torn from his head and thrown away.
His horse was failing visibly; not even this lightening could keep it away from the posse long; and yet the man threw away his sole chance of safety.
And the fifteen pursuers cursed solemnly as they saw the truth.He would run his horse to death and then die with it empty handed rather than let either of them fall a captive.
Unburdened by saddle or gun or trapping, the stallion gave himself in the last effort.There ahead lay safety, if they could shake off this last relay of the posse, and for a time he pulled away until Retherton grew anxious, and once more the bullets went questing around the fugitive.But it was a dying effort.They gained; they drew away; and then they were only holding the posse even, and then once more, they fell back gradually toward the pursuit.It was the end, and Barry sat bolt erect and looked around him; that would be the last of him and the last scene he should see.
There came the posse, distant but running closer.With every stride Satan staggered; with every stride his head drooped, and all the lilt of his running was gone.Ten minutes, five minutes more and the fifteen would be around him.He looked to the river which thundered there at his side.
It was the very swiftest portion of all the Asper between Tucker Creek and Caswell City.Even at that moment, a few hundred yards away, a tall tree which had been undermined, fell into the stream and dashed the spray high;yet even that fall was silent in the general roar of the river.Checked by the body and the branches of the tree for an instant before it should be torn away from the bank and shot down stream, the waters boiled and left a comparatively smooth, swift sliding current beyond the obstruction; and it gave to Barry a chance or a ghost of a chance:
