Lahoma | Page 7

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 his great neck; the yells of rage were in his ears, but he heard the soft breathing of the little one fast asleep in the midst of her dangers.
He had selected for himself, and for Gledware, ponies that had often been run against each other, and which no others of all Red Kimball's corral could surpass in speed. Gledware and the child were on the pony that Kimball had once staked against the swiftest animal the Indians could produce--and Willock rode the pride of the Indian band, which had almost won the prize. The ponies had been staked on the issue of that encounter--and the highwaymen had retained, by right of craft and force, what the government would not permit its wards to barter or sell.
The race