Determinedly they held on, working the handles desperately, Alex watching the grim, clean-shaven face and the fluttering dotted handkerchief about the pursuing man’s neck with a curious fascination.
At last he was parallel with them. Still running, he drew his revolver. “Stop!” he ordered. “Stop, or I’ll put one through you!”
“Keep it up, boy,” the oiler directed sharply. “He daresn’t fire. He daresn’t add murder to it. And he’d be heard at the junction.”
The runner snapped his gun back into its holster, and putting on an extra spurt, rushed slanting up the embankment, and threw himself bodily upon the oiler. They tumbled off backwards in a struggling heap. Throwing his weight against the handles, Alex stopped the velocipede, sprang off, and dashed to the oiler’s assistance.
The cowman’s revolver had fallen from his belt. Alex caught it up and pressed it against the back of the man’s head. “Stop it! Let go!” he cried. “I’ll certainly shoot!”
The man half relaxed, and glared up sideways. Alex brought the muzzle to his eyes, and slowly he freed his hold on the oiler. “Oh, very well,” he muttered with a curse. “You win.”
“No—don’t!” said Alex, as the enraged oiler spun about to strike the half-prostrate man. “He’s down, and has given up.”
At that moment interruption came from another quarter. It was a shrill cry from the direction of the creek-bed, and turning, all three saw a round-shouldered figure on horseback scrambling from the creek-bottom, leading the ponies of the two would-be wreckers, and the second cowman running toward him.
“It’s Little Hawk!” Alex exclaimed.
The cowboy reached the Indian, sprang at him, there was a terrific scrimmage, and the white man sprang from the melee with the bridle of one of the ponies, leaped into the saddle, and was off across the prairie in a whirl of dust.