"It will be all right!" he called back.
P.D. in the freshness of his long holiday, feeling a familiar pressure of a leg, hastened to overtake his companions; and the group of Little Riversites watched a chubby horseman and a tall, gaunt horseman, bathed in gold, riding away on a hazy sea of gold, with Jag Ear's bells growing fainter and fainter, until the moving specks were lost in the darkness.
XXXVI
AROUND THE WATER-HOLE
Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had he and Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eight hours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all the time to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fat in a constitutional crisis.
"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio.
It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra had any intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was off again in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain pricked with stars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world.
"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reach the water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prather might have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearest railroad station in Mexico.
"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered.
"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently.