Then it came home to me in a flash. I felt the truth of it. “He DARE not fire!” I cried. “He dare not turn towards us. He cannot show his face! If he did, we might recognise him!”
On we rode, still gaining. “Now, now,” I cried, “we shall catch him!”
Even as I leaned forward to seize his rein, the fugitive, without checking his horse, without turning his head, drew his revolver from his belt, and, raising his hand, fired behind him at random. He fired towards us, on the chance. The bullet whizzed past my ear, not hitting anyone. We scattered, right and left, still galloping free and strong. We did not return his fire, as I had told the others of my desire to take him alive. We might have shot his horse; but the risk of hitting the rider, coupled with the confidence we felt of eventually hunting him to earth, restrained us. It was the great mistake we made.
He had gained a little by his shots, but we soon caught it up. Once more I said, “We are on him!”
A minute later, we were pulled up short before an impenetrable thicket of prickly shrubs, through which I saw at once it would have been quite impossible to urge our staggering horses.
The other man, of course, reached it before us, with his mare's last breath. He must have been making for it, indeed, of set purpose; for the second he arrived at the edge of the thicket he slipped off his tired pony, and seemed to dive into the bush as a swimmer dives off a rock into the water.
“We have him now!” I cried, in a voice of triumph. And Colebrook echoed, “We have him!”
We sprang down quickly. “Take him alive, if you can!” I exclaimed, remembering Hilda's advice. “Let us find out who he is, and have him properly tried and hanged at Buluwayo! Don't give him a soldier's death! All he deserves is a murderer's!”
“You stop here,” Colebrook said, briefly, flinging his bridle to Doolittle to hold. “Doctor and I follow him. Thick bush. Knows the ways of it. Revolvers ready!”
I handed my sorrel to Doolittle. He stopped behind, holding the three foam-bespattered and panting horses, while Colebrook and I dived after our fugitive into the matted bushes.