“What’s up? What’s the matter?” demanded the scout, his muscles all aquiver.
“They are retreating; I heard the tramp of their horses’ feet on the other side the ridge, and, oh, heavens! Jo, I heard the moans of a woman—it must have been Lizzie—and that set my brain on fire, and scarcely knowing what I did I left both the horses and rushed to the ridge—but they were gone; I could see nothing of them, and then I turned to hunt for you. In God’s name, can we do nothing?”
Scarcely giving his companion time to finish his words, and vouchsafing no reply, Lightning Jo shot over the hill like an arrow, straight in the path of the fleeing Comanches. He did not pause to leap upon the back of his own mustang; he had no time for that.
Down the hollow, between the ridges, he shot like a thunderbolt. His practiced eye saw on the ground around him the prints of the horses’ flying feet, and he knew that he was on the right track. Still he saw nothing of them—but look! Six horsemen on a full gallop were seen thundering over the ridge in a direction at right-angles to the one he was pursuing—fleeing as they supposed from three times their number, but in reality from a single man.
The excited scout could not avoid giving out his wild, peculiar yell, as he recognized among the half-dozen the chieftain Swico, and saw that he held in his black arms the beautiful Lizzie Manning.
The Comanches heard that strange yell, and identified it. Only one living man could give utterance to that frightful cry, and once heard it could never be forgotten. They glanced over their shoulders and saw the single man bearing down upon them; but they continued their headlong flight, and the next moment were shut out, for the time, from view by the interposing ridge over which they had just passed.
No doubt they believed that the single scout, rushing down upon them at such terrific speed, had a whole company upon his heels, and they could not pause, just then, for the delightful privilege of killing such a noted enemy as he.
Lightning Jo kept on down the hollow, following a course at right-angles to the one taken by the Comanches, until he reached the point where they had gone over, when he bounded up the declivity, expecting to come up with them the next minute.
As he did so he was met by the discharge of two rifles—one of the bullets striking him in the fleshy part of the thigh; but although the sting instantly warned him of what had taken place, he did not pause or even look down to see how serious was the wound, but he made straight for the Indians, who were now in full view again.