Lahoma | Page 7

awakened by the firing, screamed with
terror at finding her head pressed to his bosom.
"Come!" Willock called breathlessly to the prisoner who still stood
with his back to the moon, as if horror at what he had just witnessed

rendered him as helpless as he had been from sheer terror. Still holding
the screaming child, he darted to the ponies that were tied to the
projecting logs of the cabin and hastily unfastened two of the fleetest.
Henry Gledware, awakened as from a trance, bounded to his side.
Willock helped him to mount, then placed the child the saddle in front
of him.
"Ride!" he urged hoarsely, "ride for your life! They ain't no other
chance for you and the kid and they ain't no other chance for me."
He leaped upon the second pony.
"Which way?" faltered Gledware, settling in the saddle and grasping
the bridle, but without the other's practised ease.
"Follow the moon--I'll ride against the wind--more chance for one of us
if we ain't together. Start when I do, for when they hear the horses
they'll be out of that door like so many devils turned loose on us. Ride,
pardner, ride, and save the kid for God's sake! Now--off we go!"
He gave Gledware's pony a vicious cut with his lariat, and drove the
spurs into his own broncho. The thunder of hoofs as they plunged in
different directions, caused a sudden commotion within the isolated
cabin. The door was flung open, and in the light that streamed forth,
Willock, looking back, saw dark forms rush out, gather about the
prostrate forms of the two brothers, move here and there in indecision,
then, by a common impulse, burst into a swinging run for the horses.
As for Gledware, he never once turned his face. Urging on his horse at
utmost speed, and clasping the child to his breast, he raced toward the
light. The shadow of horse, man and child, at first long and black,
lessened to a mere speck, then vanished with the rider beyond the circle
of the level world.

CHAPTER III
FLIGHT
Brick Willock, galloping toward the Southeast, frequently looked back.
He saw the desperadoes leap upon their horses, wheel about in short
circles that brought the animals upright, then spring forward in pursuit.
He heard the shouting which, though far away, sounded the
unmistakable accent of ungovernable fury. In the glaring moonlight, he
distinguished plainly the cloud of dust and sand raised by the horses,

which the wind lifted in white shapes against the deep blue of the sky.
And looking beyond his pursuers toward the rude cabin where the
highwaymen had so long held their rendezvous, he knew, because no
animate forms appeared against the horizon, that the Kimball brothers
lay where he had stretched them- -one, senseless from the crashing
blow on his head, the other, lifeless from the bullet in his breast.
The little girl and her stepfather had vanished from the smooth open
page of the Texas Panhandle--and Brick Willock rejoiced, with a joy
new to him, that these escaped prisoners had not been pursued. It was
himself that the band meant to subject to their savage vengeance, and
himself alone. The murder of the child was abhorrent to their hearts
which had not attained the hardened insensibility of their leader's
conscience, and they were willing for the supposed spy to escape, since
it spared them the embarrassment of disposing of the little girl.
But Brick Willock had been one of them and he had killed their leader,
and their leader's brother, or at least had brought them to the verge of
death. If Red Kimball revived, he would doubtless right his own
wrongs, should Willock live to be punished. In the meantime, it was for
them to treat with the traitor--this giant of a Texan, huge-whiskered,
slow of speech, who had ever been first to throw himself into the thick
of danger but who had always hung back from deeds of cruelty. He had
plundered coaches and wagon-trains with them, he had fought with
them against strong bodies of emigrants, he had killed and burned--in
the eyes of the world his deeds made him one of them, and his aspect
marked him as the most dangerous of the band. But they had always
felt the difference--and now they meant to kill him not only because he
had overpowered their leader but because of this difference.
As their bullets pursued him, Willock lay along the body of the
broncho, feeling his steed very small, and himself very large--and yet,
despite the rain of lead, his pleasure over the escape of the child
warmed his heart. The sand was plowed up by his side from the
peppering of bullets--but he seemed to feel that innocent unconscious
arm about