With right hand on the saddle horn, left grasping rein and mane, he swung up, and before ever he touched leather, they were off.
Would his mount prove broncho? Had his probably Mexican owner uglied his disposition? That remained to be discovered. And on that detail would depend much of the success of his race for help. For with Norris at the far end of the ridge, there would be several hours of tough going, he surmised.
“Yes, sir, you shore gotta slope some!” he told the mustang, in imitation of the cow-men. “Or those Greasers will just naturally fade out of the landscape.”
As the night wind blew the smoke down canyon, he could very nearly tell his way, and the time as well, by the stars. Being early in July, he knew that in the constellation of Hercules, almost directly above, the hero’s head pointed South. It was something Norris had told them one night when they had to travel late to find a fit camping spot. The crest of the ridge lay South, and along the crest he should find more open going. He would then have to veer to the West. As Venus rose brilliantly in the East, he knew he had now about two hours and a half till sunrise.
Breasting the wind, he headed around the twisting stems of unyielding manzanita, then up, straight South, over slide rock and fallen tree trunks, turning aside for only the larger bowlders. The mountain-bred horse was lithe as a greyhound, as he alternately climbed and slid, or made wide leaps over the uneven slope.
The ridge attained, however, he found it harder going than he had imagined, by reason of the broken shale, weathered by the frost of unnumbered winters. But just on the other side,—that furthest from the fire zone,—stretched a smooth granite slope, where the going would be unobstructed. But these smooth slopes, bed of that prehistoric river of ice, slanted slowly but surely to the cascading mountain stream whose roar now assailed his ears. One slip on that smooth surface and his horse would never stop till he had reached the rapids! The boy wondered if the animal were sufficiently sure-footed. The answer would mean, at the very least, the difference between a broken leg and a sound one, for the boy speeding to secure help in the capture of the fire bugs. But there seemed a fighting chance, and he would take it.
At intervals the granite was blocked out by cracks, and he found the slight unevenness of a crack lent his mount a surer footing. At times it was fairly level and he ventured a gallop; again it was precarious even at a walk.
Suddenly a monotonous “chick-chick-chick” buzzed beneath their feet. The horse leapt violently to one side,—just in time to evade the coiled spring of four feet of green-black rattlesnake, on whose sinister form he had all but trod. By that instant leap he had avoided the speedy death of the injected virus of the stroke. Ted’s heart was in his mouth.
On—on—on he urged the black. It became mechanical; he ceased to think. Exhausted alike by his long vigil and the strain he had been under, he now sat his horse in a daze, just keeping his nose generally Westward, while he skirted the crest of the ridge. He felt half numb as he rounded the end of the crest where Norris was to have been stationed. To his stupefaction, the fire fighters had completed their trench and gone!
Where could they be? Probably back at the camp, which he had skirted by this detour, never dreaming he would find any one but Rosa there. Well,—he was “outa luck!” Back he went the way he had come, till he thought it time to climb the ridge. A flare of cook-fire through the graying dawn showed him where to head, and the huge sun was just slipping blood-red through the smoke gloom as he took the last log at a leap and dropped off beside the moving figures.