Then Reade felt a stinging sensation in his left leg three or four inches from the heel.
“Look out!” yelled Rutter, more excitedly than before. “Get away from there!”
Tom ran some distance down the trail. Then he halted, laughing.
“I wonder what’s on Rut’s mind,” he smiled, as Hazelton joined him.
Jack Rutter came at a gallop, reining up hard as he reached where Tom had stood.
Again that whirring, clicking sound. Rutter’s pony reared.
“Still, you brute!” commanded Rutter sternly. Then, without waiting to see whether his mount would stand alone, Rutter leaped from saddle, going forward with his quirt—-a rawhide riding whip—-uplifted.
Into the brush from which Tom had stepped Rutter went cautiously, though he did not lose much time about it.
Swish! swish! swish! sounded the quirt, as Rutter laid it on the ground ahead of him. Then he stepped out. The pony had drawn back thirty or forty feet and now stood trembling, nostrils distended.
“Is that the way you take your exercise?” Reade demanded.