“Hurrah!” shouted the boy. “That’s a check!”
But neither the man nor horse got up. Both were hidden beyond the bushes that grew along the base of the fence.
Before long Frank was close to that fence, and he was lying flat on the back of his horse, half expecting the one he was pursuing was crouching behind the bushes, ready to stop the pursuit with a second shot.
With his usual reckless disregard of consequences in times of great danger, Merriwell rode at the fence, rose in the saddle, and jumped his horse over.
Man and horse lay under the bushes. The latter lifted his head and struggled to rise, but fell back. The man lay quite still, with his head curled under his body in a cramped position.
Out of the saddle leaped the boy, and he was bending over the man a moment later. Still the man did not stir, but the horse regarded the boy with a look of pain and appeal in its eyes, and whinnied pitifully.
Frank turned the man over, and the bloated face of Bill Wade, the hostler, was exposed. The man was stone dead, his neck being broken, and the horse had broken a leg.
“Poor fellow!” muttered Frank, but he was thinking of the horse.
Then he stooped and looked at the horse’s feet.
“Just as I thought!” he cried. “The shoes are set the wrong end forward on the creature, and I might have been fooled if I had not seen Wade riding into the timber. It was a clever trick, but it failed.”