"I don't know what to think, I'm goin' to catch him first!" was the grim reply. "I'll do my thinkin' afterward."
The glow of the big fire was dying away now. One reason for this was that the blaze was working its way behind a range of hills. Another was found in the coming of the dawn, the fire paling before the glow of the rising sun.
Dave gave a look back at the blaze in the grass he had seen started by the crouching figure. The flames were spreading in the dry, tinder-like grass, and for a moment Dave was worried. Then he reflected that the cowboys who were with the herd ought to be able to handle it, and, as Pete had said, the plowed strip would act in the same manner as had the burned area.
"We've got to take a chance," murmured Dave, "and it can't be a much worse chance than the one we took earlier in the night. And we must get that fellow!"
It would be the worst possible procedure to leave loose in the country so desperate a character as one who would deliberately start a prairie fire. He could do untold damage.
"I wonder who he is?" mused Dave. Yet in his heart he had an answer ready. "Some of the Molick crowd," he whispered. "Their ranch would be safe with the wind blowing the way it does now, and they must know it would send the fire right down on us. It was the Molick crowd, I'll wager a hat!"
He hurried on with the others. Dawn was breaking rapidly now. It seemed scarcely more than a few minutes since Dave saw that glow in the midnight sky, yet it was several hours. But so crowded had they been with work and worry that it seemed hardly more than one—or, at most, a few minutes.
The figure ahead was riding desperately to escape.
"He's got a good horse critter," observed Pete, admiringly. He could admire even an enemy's mount.
"Yes, but he can't keep up that speed," said Mr. Bellmore. "And our animals are fresh."