“Wait and ask Skinny there, who’s heading the lot,” Jack advised him; for he noticed the little smile on Ned’s face and believed the scout master was not so positive as Jimmy seemed to be regarding the outcome of the mad race.
Skinny looked gloomy and, indeed, there were few smiles among the seven who had so gleefully started out in his company to overhaul the fugitive and give him a little token of their warm regard.
“Did you overtake him, Skinny?” Harry called out as the returning band trotted past, their ponies lagging fearfully.
“Not so’s you could notice the same, sir,” replied the stout puncher who answered to so misleading a name.
“Then his broncho was better than any of your mounts, I suppose?” Harry continued.
The cow punchers started grumbling at a great rate, and said some pretty ugly things about the absent one.
“Seems like he was too slick for us, sir,” Skinny went on to say, dejectedly. “Co’se we might a cort up with Ally if things’d a been right and proper; but say, it wasn’t long before he started to run away from the hull outfit, and we reckons as how the old fox he must a doped all the ponies but his own mount!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
MORE TROUBLE AHEAD.
It turned out that what the dejected Skinny had said was the truth. Even the ponies that had not taken part in the chase of Ally Sloper were found to be showing plain signs of being sick. There could be no doubt but what the sly fox had laid his plans carefully, and also found an opportunity to carry the same out. He must have managed to give each broncho something in his feed that would within a certain time weaken him, especially if subjected to any violent exercise calculated to start the animal sweating freely.
Those who had pursued the fleeing puncher had kept their own for a short time, and then noticed that no matter how they urged their mounts on they were being slowly distanced. The extravagant gestures of derision on the part of Sloper also aroused suspicion; and when their ponies began to show unmistakable signs of playing out, what seemed to be the truth dawned upon them.