He sat down as Slaney vanished through the open door. In a few moments there was a clatter of hoofs, and the men crowding about the entrance saw a mounted figure riding at a gallop down the unpaved street. Then Murray looked at his comrade with a grin.

"Must have had his horse saddled ready," he chuckled. "We've fixed the thing."

CHAPTER XI
AN ESCAPADE

The night was still and clear when Thorne rode out of the ravine, in the hollow of which he had left his wagon and one hobbled horse. Reaching the level, he drew bridle and sat still in his saddle for a minute or two looking about him. The dew was settling heavily on the short, wiry grass, which shone faintly in the elusive light, with patches of darker color where his horse's hoofs had passed. Ahead, the prairie rolled away, a vast dimly lighted plain, to the soft dusky grayness which obscured the horizon, and he knew that somewhere beyond the dip of the latter stood the mountain, a broken stretch of higher ground covered with birches and willows, where if Corporal Slaney held on so long he must endeavor to evade him.

Volador seemed fit and fresh, for which he was thankful, for it was nearly twenty miles to the mountain, and he was, after all, a little uncertain about the speed of the policeman's horse, though the appearance of the beast, which he had seen in the hotel stable, did not suggest any great powers in this respect. It was, however, not the one Slaney usually rode, which he fancied might, perhaps, be significant. At length he leaned down and patted Volador's neck.

"You'll have to go to-night, old boy," he said.

The beast responded to his voice and a shake of the bridle, and they set off southward at a trot. The moon already hung rather low in the western sky, and he calculated that in another couple of hours it would have dipped beneath the grassland's rim. By then he should reach the mountain, and the darkness would be in his favor if he had not already outdistanced his pursuer. It was in a singularly buoyant mood that he rode quietly on, and it was reluctantly that he checked the horse which once or twice attempted to gallop. After the last few months of prosaic and unremitting toil, the prospect of a mad night ride, and the zest of the hazard attached to it, proved strangely exhilarating to one of his temperament. He admitted that, as Winthrop was not a particular friend of his, there was no reason why he should have undertaken the thing at all; but he remembered the appeal in Lucy Calvert's eyes, and that and the lust of a frolic was sufficient for him. There are men of his kind who, in their hearts, at least, never grow old.

He had covered two or three miles when he saw a mounted man following the trail to the settlement, and he rode on across the trail with a wave of his hat. He did not feel inclined for conversation, and everything had already been arranged. The mounted figure presently sank out of sight again, and he pulled Volador up to a slow walk. He would give Baxter half an hour to reach the settlement and put Slaney on his trail, and there was no use in wasting his horse's strength in the meanwhile.

It was nearly an hour later, and he was riding slowly, a lonely, moving speck in the center of a great level waste whose boundaries steadily receded before him, when a faint drumming of hoofs came out of the silence. Then he pulled Volador up altogether, and sat still, listening, for a while, until he felt sure that his pursuer, who was apparently riding hard, would hear him. He did not wish the man to draw too close, but it would, on the other hand, serve no purpose if he rode south unless Slaney followed him. It seemed only reasonable to suppose that once the police decided that Winthrop had got safely away to Dakota they would abandon the search for him in western Canada.