At the outset were some little gaps in the path, representing brooks and rills. Over these Sergeant Hal sped as if they did not exist, while little upward spurts of water helped out the illusion.
Ahead of the young military bicyclist now appeared a plain fence, some four feet high. Hal Overton rode at this with all the speed his flying feet could impart to the pedals. He appeared bent on violent collision with the fence.
Indeed, he rode at the palings as though he could not stop. Yet, when almost in the act of collision, Sergeant Hal made a flying leap from his wheel, which he tossed over the fence. In two incredibly swift movements he was over the fence. His wheel hardly seemed to have fallen at all, so swiftly did the young sergeant have it going again. He made a flying leap to the saddle, and was again pedaling desperately, while five or six shots to the rear filled out the illusion of a dispatch bearer being pursued by enemies.
That trick at the fence instantly took hold of the younger male portion of the audience. Denver boys saw wherein young soldiers were taught things about bicycle riding that were not known among civilians.
Hardly was Sergeant Hal going at full speed again when another obstacle loomed up in his way. This was an intrenchment front, sloping as he approached it, but with a sheer drop of some three feet on the other side.
Straight up the slope dashed Hal Overton. For a fraction of a second, as he left the top of the barrier, his wheel looked more like an odd airship, but now the forward wheel struck the ground beyond once more, the rear wheel swiftly following, and the dispatch rider was going onward faster than ever.
The small boys now led in the noise that came from the spectators' seats.
Just ahead lay the greatest peril of the path for the military dispatch rider. Here, in the hill scene, had been cut an actual gully, some eighteen feet deep, and fully twelve feet across.
Just a few minutes before a squad of soldiers had placed across this gully the trunk of a tree, shorn of its limbs and trimmed down close.
As Sergeant Hal now approached this tree trunk, which was not, at its thickest part, more than a foot in diameter, his purpose dawned upon the watching thousands.