Meantime Dick Bullen, closing the door, confronted his companions.  “Are you ready?” said Staples.  “Ready,” said Dick; “what’s the time?” “Past twelve,” was the reply; “can you make it?—­it’s nigh on fifty miles, the round trip hither and yon.”  “I reckon,” returned Dick, shortly.  “Whar’s the mare?” “Bill and Jack’s holdin’ her at the crossin’.”  “Let ’em hold on a minit longer,” said Dick.

He turned and re-entered the house softly.  By the light of the guttering candle and dying fire he saw that the door of the little room was open.  He stepped toward it on tiptoe and looked in.  The Old Man had fallen back in his chair, snoring, his helpless feet thrust out in a line with his collapsed shoulders, and his hat pulled over his eyes.  Beside him, on a narrow wooden bedstead, lay Johnny, muffled tightly in a blanket that hid all save a strip of forehead and a few curls damp with perspiration.  Dick Bullen made a step forward, hesitated, and glanced over his shoulder into the deserted room.  Everything was quiet.  With a sudden resolution he parted his huge mustaches with both hands and stooped over the sleeping boy.  But even as he did so a mischievous blast, lying in wait, swooped down the chimney, rekindled the hearth, and lit up the room with a shameless glow from which Dick fled in bashful terror.

His companions were already waiting for him at the crossing.  Two of them were struggling in the darkness with some strange misshapen bulk, which as Dick came nearer took the semblance of a great yellow horse.

It was the mare.  She was not a pretty picture.  From her Roman nose to her rising haunches, from her arched spine hidden by the stiff machillas of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony legs, there was not a line of equine grace.  In her half-blind but wholly vicious white eyes, in her protruding under lip, in her monstrous color, there was nothing but ugliness and vice.

“Now then,” said Staples, “stand cl’ar of her heels, boys, and up with you.  Don’t miss your first holt of her mane, and mind ye get your off stirrup quick.  Ready!”

There was a leap, a scrambling struggle, a bound, a wild retreat of the crowd, a circle of flying hoofs, two springless leaps that jarred the earth, a rapid play and jingle of spurs, a plunge, and then the voice of Dick somewhere in the darkness, “All right!”

“Don’t take the lower road back onless you’re hard pushed for time!  Don’t hold her in down hill!  We’ll be at the ford at five.  G’lang!  Hoopa!  Mula!  Go!”

A splash, a spark struck from the ledge in the road, a clatter in the rocky cut beyond, and Dick was gone.

*****

Sing, O Muse, the ride of Richard Bullen!  Sing, O Muse of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of Simpson’s Bar!  Alack! she is dainty, this Muse!  She will have none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged rider, and I must fain follow him in prose, afoot!