‘All right, Jimmy,’ said one of Monteagle’s captors.
‘The divil a bit of noise I hear, I heard only the barking of them cursed lane wolfs that the uncivilized graysers call key-oats. And the d—d half starved things made me feel a bit afeard, for they sounded like a dog howling, and you know when a dog howls it’s sure some one that hears him is soon going under the sod.’
‘Shut up your Murphy-trap, Jim, or just open it, and take a swallow of this: I got it at the Sazerac as I passed, thinking you might need a little Dutch courage, and that brandy would put pluck into even John Chinaman’s chicken heart.’
‘Come, come, let’s mount and be off.’ This order was given by a voice which Monteagle recognized as that of the man who placed the pistol at his head, and who appeared to be the leader of the gang.
Monteagle was placed upon a horse, and with a mounted man on each side of him, one of whom held the lariat of his steed. The word was given to proceed, and they all started at a brisk trot.
‘What way?’ said Jimmy.
‘Right straight for the hut!’ was the response.
Monteagle and his assailants had just disappeared in a deep hollow, when a man suddenly emerged from the thick shrubbery that enclosed the spot from which the party had departed. He was a short, powerfully built man. Even in the moonlight one could see that there were more white than black hairs in the abundant locks that fell upon his variously colored blanket; but his eye-brows were coal-black, and bent over eyes as bright and keen as the point of a dagger.
‘Holy Barbara!’ ejaculated he in Spanish, while his hands almost mechanically made the sign of the Cross. ‘What in the name of San Diabolo are they going to do with that youth? But I must be off, or it will be too late to save him. No wonder our dear mistress Donna Inez loves him. I owe him a good turn, too, for he certainly saved my life when them two ‘Pike’ hombres were going to give me ‘hell,’ as they called it, because I was sober on the Fourth of July.’ Thus soliloquizing, the Californian, for such he was, withdrew once more into the thicket, and in a second returned, followed by a noble looking steed, black as midnight.
‘You shall have a good run now, my handsome Cid,’ said the old Californian, as he patted the mane upon the forehead of the noble animal, as gently as a father would the curls that clustered on the brow of a favorite daughter.