All night the six went on, with Bill Dozier’s
long-striding chestnut setting the pace. He made
no effort toward a spurt now. Andrew Lanning
led them by a full hour’s riding on a comparatively
fresh horse, and, unless he were foolish enough to
indulge in another wild spurt, they could not wear
him down in this first stage of the journey. There
was only the chance that he would build a fire recklessly
near to the trail, but still they came to no sign
of light, and then the dawn broke and Bill Dozier
found unmistakable signs of a trotting horse which
went straight up the valley. There were no other
fresh tracks pointing in the same direction, and this
must be Andy’s horse. And the fact that
he was trotting told many things. He was certainly
saving his mount for a long grind. Bill Dozier
looked about at his men in the gray morning. They
were a hard-faced lot; he had not picked them for tenderness.
They were weary now, but the fugitive must be still
wearier, for he had fear to keep him company and burden
his shoulders.
And now they came to a surprising break in the trail.
It twisted from the floor of the valley up a steep
slope, crossed the low crest of the hills, and finally
came out above a broad and open valley.
“What does he mean,” said Bill Dozier
aloud, “by breakin’ for Jack Merchant’s
house?”
CHAPTER 5
The yell with which Andrew Lanning had shot out of
Martindale, and which only Jasper Lanning had recognized,
was no more startling to the men of the village than
it was to Andrew himself. Mingled in an ecstasy
of emotion, there was fear, hate, anger, grief, and
the joy of freedom in that cry; but it froze the marrow
of Andy’s bones to hear it.
Fear, most of all, was driving him out of the village.
Just as he rushed around the bend of the street he
looked back to the crowd of men tumbling upon their
horses; every hand there would be against him.
He knew them. He ran over their names and faces.
Thirty seconds before he would rather have walked
on the edge of a cliff than rouse the anger of a single
one among these men, and now, by one blow, he had started
them all after him.
Once, as he topped the rise, the folly of attempting
to escape from their long-proved cunning made him
draw in on the rein a little; but the horse only snorted
and shook his head and burst into a greater effort
of speed. After all, the horse was right, Andy
decided. For the moment he thought of turning
and facing that crowd, but he remembered stories about
men who had killed the enemy in fair fight, but who
had been tried by a mob jury and strung to the nearest
tree.
