But they were traveling fast when they reached the timber grove in which Carrington’s men were concealed; and yet on the damp earth of the trail, where the sunlight could not penetrate, and where the leaves of past summers had fallen, to rot and weave a pulpy carpet, the rush of Spotted Tail’s passing created little sound.
Within a hundred feet of the spot where Carrington’s men were concealed, Spotted Tail shot his ears forward stiffly and raised his muzzle inquiringly. Taylor, noting the action, and suspecting that instinct had warned Spotted Tail of the approach of another horse, drew the animal down and rode forward at a walk, for he felt that it must be Carrington’s horse which was approaching.
Rounding a sharp turn in the trail, Taylor could look ahead for perhaps a hundred feet. He saw no rider advancing toward him, and he leaned forward, slapping the black’s neck in playful reproach.
As he moved he heard the heavy crash of a pistol shot and felt the bullet sing past his head. Another pistol barked venomously from some brush on his right, and still another from his left.
But none of the bullets struck Taylor. For the black horse, startled by Taylor’s playful movement when all his senses were strained to detect the location of his kind on the trail, had made an involuntary forward leap, thus whisking his rider out of the line of fire. And before either of the three men could shoot again, Spotted Tail had flashed down the trail—a streak of somber black against the green background of the trees.
He fled over the hundred feet of straight trail and had vanished around a bend before the Carrington men could move their weapons around impeding branches of the brush that covered them. There was no stopping Spotted Tail now, for he was in a frenzy of terror—and he made a mere rushing black blot as he emerged from the timber and fled across an open space toward another wood—the wood that surrounded the big house.
Standing on the front porch of the big house, nervously smoking a cigar, his face set in sullen lines, his eyes fixed on the Dawes trail, Carrington heard the shots. He sighed, grinned maliciously, and relaxed his vigilance.
“He’s settled by now,” he said.
He looked at one of the chairs standing on the porch, thought of sitting in one of them to await the coming of the three men, decided he was too impatient to sit, and began walking back and forth on the porch.
He had thrown a half-smoked cigar away and was lighting another when he saw a black blot burst from the edge of a timber-clump beyond an open space. The match flared and went out as Carrington held it to the end of the cigar, for there was something strangely familiar in the shape of the black blot—even with it heading directly toward him. An instant later, the blot looming larger in his vision, Carrington dropped cigar and match and stood staring with wild, fear-haunted eyes at the rushing black horse.