The party of which the man spoke was composed of Monteagle, Joaquin, and a few Californians, who, after infinite pains, had discovered a clue to the course pursued by the capturers of Inez, and had traced them to the ranch in which she was a prisoner.—Joaquin and Blodget had approached the house in order to determine the best course to pursue in order to capture the villains and release Inez.
‘Listen,’ said Blodget to his accomplice. ‘If they find me here, I may be recognized and arrested, if not for this, for other trifling affairs, which may end in neck-stretching. They can have no proof of our carrying off the girl, unless the wench is found. That is not possible, as no one can have any suspicion of the underground room.—They will search the house, and finding their search in vain, must leave the place. I will try to get off unobserved through the ravine at the back of the ranch, and catch the first horse I can find and make for the city. Let me hear from you as soon as they go, and we will concert future measures about the girl. I will be at our old place in Jackson street.’
As the villain concluded speaking, he drew and cocked his revolver, and noiselessly moved from the back of the house towards the ravine of which he had spoken.
Hardly had the ruffian entered the ravine ere he was descried by Monteagle, whose party had been placed so as almost to surround the ranch.
‘Stop! or I fire,’ cried Monteagle.
Blodget burst through the thicket, and Monteagle leaped his horse after him, but the fugitive turned sharply round the moment the horse’s hoofs touched the turf, and discharged his revolver. The darkness and hurry in which he fired prevented him from taking aim, and Monteagle remained unscathed, but the bullet crashed through the head of the horse, and the animal reared up, and then fell upon its side and expired.
Blodget fled precipitately, and as soon as Monteagle could extricate himself from his dead horse, he rushed after him, calling loudly on his friends. Two of them followed him, but Blodget kept the advantage which he had gained by shooting the horse, and sped across the meadows with the swiftness of a hunted coyote. Beyond the ravine there was a high steep hill, thinly wooded, and on the farther side of the hill a thick and extensive wood. If he could gain this wood, he doubted not that he should be enabled to baffle his pursuers, and he made for the hill with the speed of a grayhound.
He threw a hurried look behind him as he reached the foot of the hill, and then dashed up the ascent, for he heard behind him the shouts of his pursuers and the voice of Monteagle urging the two men to come on faster. The hill was steep, and, except where a scanty vegetable soil had been formed during successive winters by the decay of moss and leaves, its rugged side was covered with smooth pebbles, in which the fugitive’s feet sunk and slipped as he toiled upward. Until Monteagle reached the hill, therefore, Blodget lost ground, but when his pursuers commenced the fatiguing ascent they were again upon an equality.
The pursuers and pursued were unable to see each other, and could only discover their relative positions by pausing to listen, and then only by such sounds as the slipping of pebbles under the feet, the rolling down of some displaced stone, the rustling of brambles and brakes, or the snapping of boughs. The hill became steeper as the robber and his pursuers approached the summit, and they had to grasp the boughs of dwarf oaks to assist them in the ascent, and sometimes to drag themselves over the smooth faces of bare brown rocks, polished by atmospheric influences, clinging to roots of trees which appeared above the soil, and inserting their toes into crevices, or setting them upon projecting points.
Near the summit Blodget paused to rest, to listen, and to look behind him; below him he heard the voices of his panting pursuers, the rustling of bushes and brakes, and the grating sound of their footsteps in the loose pebbles. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and then he resumed his clambering progress, still hoping to find a refuge in the wood on the other side. The summit of the hill was sharp and bare, the brown rock coming to the surface uncovered by the scantiest layer of soil, and its bald crest passed, he had little fear of his ultimate escape. A glen, or ravine, the sides of which were clothed with breaks or ferns, led from the summit down to the wood, and the shortest way of gaining access to the glen from the side which he was ascending, was through a gap or cleft in the rocky crest of the hill. In the bottom of this gap laid a large fragment of rock, nearly flat on the upper side, and rounded at the edges by the abrading influence of rain and fog; probably it had originally been disruptured from the crags which arose on either side, and remained in that position for ages. It partly overhung the steep acclivity which Blodget was now clambering up, and by pausing a few moments to recruit his strength, and then clinging with his fingers to the fissures in the rock, he drew himself up until he reached its top in safety.