Two or three minutes passed. Then Mr. Ellsworth leaped from his seat in the foremost automobile, standing erect in the car and pointing excitedly.
“Look there!” he shouted lustily. “What's happening?”
Away off, at the further side of the Man-killer, a horseman had suddenly ridden into sight from behind a sand pile. His swiftly moving pony had gotten within three hundred yards of the chief engineer before Tom looked up to behold the newcomer.
From where the railroad officials watched they could hear nothing, though they saw a succession of indistinct spittings from something in the right hand of the horseman.
“It's a revolver the fellow's shooting at Mr. Reade!” gasped Superintendent Hawkins, leaping into the car beside the general manager. “Turn your speed on, man—make a lightning lash across the Man-killer!”
Away shot the automobile, not wholly to the liking of two eastern men who sat in the directors' car.
Tom Reade had realized his danger. Having nothing with which to fight, Reade had sprung his horse eastward and was racing for life.
The unknown had emptied his weapon, but that did not deter him, for, continuing his wild pursuit, the stranger could be seen to draw another automatic revolver.
The bullets striking all about Tom's pony ploughed up the sand.
Within a minute the men in the speeding automobile were close enough to hear the sputtering crackle of the pistol shots.