"I don't see that we've lost much," said Jim Scarboro. "We've got their direction and our horses are fresh beside of theirs. We'll make up that twenty miles and be in at the finish to-morrow; we're four to four. Let's ride."
Tall Eric rubbed his chin.
"That Benavides," he said, "is a tough one. He is a known man. He's as good as Johnson when it comes to shooting."
"I'm not afraid of the shooting, and I'm not afraid of death," said Zurich impatiently; "but I am leery about that cussed old man. He'll find a way to fool us—see if he don't!"
* * * * *
A strong wind blew scorching from the south the next day; Johnson turned aside from the sagebrush country to avoid the worst sand, and bent north to a long half-circle, through a country of giant saguaro and clumped yuccas; once they passed over a neck of lava hillocks thinly drifted over with sand. The heat was ghastly; on their faces alkali dust, plastered with sweat, caked in the stubble of two days' growth; their eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. Boland, bruised and racked and cramped, suffered agonies.
It was ten in the morning when Joe touched Pete's arm:
"Qué cosa?" He pointed behind them and to the north, to a long, low-lying streak of dust.
"Trouble, Don Hooaleece? I think so—yes."
They had no spyglass; but it was hardly needed. The dust streak followed them, almost parallel to their course. It gained on them. They changed their gait from a walk to a trot. The dust came faster; they were pursued.