The young puncher urged his horse to greater speed. Wichita’s mount was weakening. The man drew closer. In a moment he would be able to reach out and seize her bridle rein. The two had far outdistanced the others trailing in the dust behind.
Wichita drew her six-shooter. “Be careful, cow-boy!” she warned. “I ain’t got nothin’ agin’ you, but I’ll shore bore you if you lay ’ary hand on this bridle.”
Easily Wichita lapsed into the vernacular she had spent three years trying to forget, as she always and unconsciously did under stress of excitement.
“Then I’ll run that cayuse o’ yourn ragged,” threatened the man. “He’s just about all in now.”
“Yours is!” snapped Wichita, levelling her six-shooter at the horse of her pursuer and pulling the trigger.
The man uttered an oath and tried to rein in to avoid the shot. Wichita’s hammer fell with a futile click. She pulled the trigger again and again with the same result. The man voiced a loud guffaw and closed up again. The girl turned her horse to one side to avoid him. Again he came on in the new direction; and when he was almost upon her she brought her mount to its haunches, wheeled suddenly and spurred across the trail to the rear of the man and rode on again at right angles to her former direction, but she had widened the distance between them.
Once more the chase began, but now the man had taken down his rope and was shaking out the noose. He drew closer. Standing in his stirrups, swinging the great noose, he waited for the right instant. Wichita tried to turn away from him, but she saw that he would win that way as easily, since she was turning back toward the other four who were already preparing to intercept her.
Her horse was heavier than the pony ridden by the young puncher and that fact gave Wichita a forlorn hope. Wheeling, she spurred straight toward the man with the mad intention of riding him down. If her own horse did not fall too, she might still have a chance.
The puncher sensed instantly the thing that was in her mind; and just before the impact he drove his spurs deep into his pony’s sides, and as Wichita’s horse passed behind him he dropped his noose deftly to the rear over his left shoulder, and an instant later had drawn it tight about the neck of the girl’s mount.
She reached forward and tried to throw off the rope, but the puncher backed away, keeping it taut; and then “Dirty” Cheetim and the three others closed in about her.