“Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursuing a confederate of the Injin Low—THE HORSE THIEF!”
CHAPTER VIII
The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon and sky, dropped a thick veil on the high road and the silent streets of Indian Spring. As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through the obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.
“Some one ahead!”
The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above the steady plunging of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of other hoofs in the darkness before them.
“It's that horse thief!” said Dunn, in a savage whisper. “Bear to the right, and hand me the whip.”
A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at each stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. “Sing out to him to pull up, or we'll fire. My voice is clean gone,” he added, in a husky whisper.
They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a vehicle careering from side to side in the blackness ahead. Dunn deliberately raised his weapon. “Sing out!” he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who was still keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion's arm.
“Hush! It's NOT Buckskin,” he whispered hurriedly.