They leaped into their saddles and started again, not in the direction of the hacienda, but in that of the Paso.
"Loosen your bridles," the hunter said: "more still—we are not moving."
Suddenly a loud neigh was borne on the breeze to the ears of the fugitives.
"We are lost!" Valentine muttered. "They have found our trail."
Red Cedar was too old a hand on the prairie to be long thrown out: he soon perceived that he was mistaken, and was now turning back, quite certain this time of holding the trail. Then began one of those fabulous races which only the dwellers on the prairie can witness—races which intoxicate and cause a giddiness, and which no obstacle is powerful enough to stop or check, for the object is success or death. The bandits' half wild horses, apparently identifying themselves with the ferocious passions of their riders, glided through the night with the rapidity of the phantom steed in the German ballad, bounded over precipices, and rushed with prodigious speed.
At times a horseman rolled with his steed from the top of a rock, and fell into an abyss, uttering a yell of distress; but his comrades passed over his body, borne along like a whirlwind, and responding to this cry of agony, the final appeal of a brother, by a formidable howl of rage. This pursuit had already lasted two hours, and the fugitives had not lost an inch of ground: their horses, white with foam, uttered hoarse cries of fatigue and exhaustion as a dense smoke came out of their nostrils. Doña Clara, with her hair untied and floating in the breeze, with sparkling eye and closely pressed lips, constantly urged her horse on with voice and hand.
"All is over!" the hunter suddenly said. "Save yourselves! I will let myself be killed here, so that you may go on for ten minutes longer, and be saved. I will hold out for that time, so go on."
"No," Don Pablo answered nobly; "we will be all saved or perish together."
"Yes," the maiden remarked.
Valentine shrugged his shoulders.