Hurry on she did, indeed, for the pinto was covered with sweat and foam as they took the road that followed the new grade at a run.
They neared the buttes. Mart had passed between them, Manzanita knew, else she would have seen him on the level desert across which she now sped along.
Now and then she passed through groups of workmen, who stared curiously at the foam-flecked mare and her rider. Mart could not be so very far ahead, she reasoned, for it was doubtful if he had traveled as swiftly as she had after he had shaken her off. Still, twenty minutes is a long time in a matter of one rider overtaking another, and the girl would not allow the tough little mare to flag.
They passed between the buttes, and here for five minutes she was held back by a shot that was scheduled to be fired. There was but the one shot, and as it detonated between the rocky walls she lunged her mare past the astonished man who had stopped her, and, with rocks and earth falling about her, spurred on through the deep cut.
She made three more camps, each time to learn that Mart had ridden on up the line only a few minutes before her arrival. Yes, the sheriff had ridden on ahead of him, hours before.
And so she came to Stlingbloke, with her faltering mare about all in and her rider’s hope receding with each new stopping point.
The ragtown was alight. It was growing dark now. Piano music tinkled in the resorts. There came the sounds of ribald laughter and dancing feet. Stlingbloke was rousing itself from the afternoon siesta.
In the street Manzanita accosted the first man she met.
Yes, a man who said he was the sheriff had been there that afternoon. The sheriff had been riding alone. Her informer had seen nothing of a boy on a bay horse looking for the sheriff.
“But there’s the sheriff now,” said the man, pointing suddenly to a gray horse and rider just jogging into town from the desert to the west.