"No, don't stop! Go on! Go on!" urged Jack. "Oh, what am I going to do?" he murmured. "I'm on a lonely trail, with the valuable mail and express. That's what Ryan counts on. He thinks I'll fall by the wayside and he can come up and get what he wants when I'm unconscious.
"But what is it he wants? The Argent letters, of course. That's what he's after! He's drugged me. He's going to give me time to fall in a faint, and then he's coming along to rob the mail. The Argent letters must be in the sacks that aren't opened. He must have found that out in some way, and have been on the watch for me.
"But he won't get them. I'll not let him roll the mail!" cried Jack, speaking aloud, and trying to put some fierce energy into his voice. But it died away faintly.
"How can I stop him? How can I foil him?" mused the ill and almost fainting rider. "I—I've got to do something. But what? I can't stay in the saddle much longer. Go on, Sunger! Go on!"
For the pony had stopped again.
Jack wanted desperately to get a drink from the cold spring, but he dared not.
"If I leave the saddle I'd not have strength to get up in it again," he reasoned. "But I've got to do something! I've got to do something!"
He repeated the words over and over again, until they rang in his numbed brain like the refrain of some song. Sunger did not know what to make of it all. He could tell something was wrong, and whinnied once or twice. But Jack was too ill to answer him, or pat him caressingly as he always did.
"Sunger, we've got to do something! We've got to do something to save the mail!" whispered the poor lad. He was too weak to do more than whisper.
Jack tried to listen, and to ascertain if the outlaw who had played this trick on him was coming behind him on the trail, for he realized that Ryan would soon follow, to reap the fruits of his villany. But there was no sound save the echo of Sunger's hoof-beats. It was getting late in the afternoon.