A madness was come upon Sam. From out the night countless voices called to him appealingly; away out there in the illusive sheen must be liberty and delight. His sluggish blood was racing wildly, his body and limbs were a-quake with eagerness to respond to that appeal, to be gone into that alluring gloom. One of the staked animals whinnied and tugged fiercely on his rope.
At once the buckskin stallion blared a challenge, and he was away. The shadows swallowed him up. From over the hill came a rolling thunder, the noise of scores of flying hoofs, and Sam got the hobble between his teeth a second time, gave one ferocious upward rend, and the strands parted and dropped from him. He was free, and the wilderness was calling, calling.
“Ol’ Hell-on-Wheels has done gone,” observed Dave.
“Done gone?” the wagon boss echoed. “Gone where? He must be round somewheres. He cain’t git through the day without bread, Sam cain’t.”
“He done run off with them mustangs!” In Dave’s tone was depressed conviction. “You hearn ’em last night the same as me. Nobody seen him go, but look here. I jist found his hobble all bit in two.”
“And we’ve got to move camp this morning,” the wagon boss raved.
“P’raps he’ll come back. I shouldn’t think they’d want Sam with ’em, Uncle Henery. He’d smash ’em all up, that bunch, he would!”
“He shore would.” Uncle Henry could not suppress a snigger of satisfaction.
He dispatched two of the boys to scour the country for the fugitive, and Dave hitched a two-mule team, falling a prey to melancholy as he moved about them in absolute security. How he missed that ol’ son-of-a-gun with his sly nibbles and his kicking and sublime obstinacy. These creatures pull? The cook grew hot with disdain and had two men told off to help haul the wagon with ropes in bad spots. In the days that followed he would often stop in his work and wonder what sense there was in going through life, anyway.
Meanwhile, Sam flourished like unto the green bay tree. When the band sped away into the hills the night of his temptation and fall, the mule summoned up unguessed reserves of speed and trailed behind. The tumultuous joy of liberty fired him; his muscles responded to this new throbbing life like steel springs, so that Sam not only caught up with the mustangs, but ran well within himself in holding with them. The renegade Pete galloped in rear and, knowing Sam these many years, nickered him breathless welcome.