“Since dark,” responded Jeffries. “But, John,” he asked, “could a man hit in the way de Spain was hit, climb into a saddle and make a get-away?”
“Henry might,” answered Lefever laconically.
Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o’clock after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken place, they followed de Spain’s jump through the broken sash into the patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy’s country, but there was no gainsaying the trail––occasional flecks of blood blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led––not as the trailers hoped they would, in a wide détour across easy-riding country 147 toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road––but farther and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man’s land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.
Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head as he leaned over the pony’s shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast of him. “It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind of riding.”
Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first time. Here Scott picked up five empty shells ejected from de Spain’s revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain was no longer guiding Sassoon’s pony; it was wandering at will.
Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had come almost completely about and headed again for 148 Music Mountain. Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan’s Gap and were practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.
“Here’s a go,” muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth for a mile in an effort to pick the horse up again.
“Remember,” interposed Scott mildly, “he is riding Sassoon’s horse––the brute is naturally heading for home.”
“Follow him home, then,” said Lefever unhesitatingly.
Scott looked at his companion in surprise: “Near home, you mean, John,” he suggested inoffensively. “For three of us to ride into the Gap this morning would be some excitement for the Morgans. I don’t think the excitement would last long––for us.”