Larry gently raised her to her feet, but it was a minute or two before she could stand upright, and the man’s face was haggard when he lifted her to the saddle.
“I think the end has come,” he said. “You can ride no farther.”
Hetty swayed a little; but she clutched the bridle, and a faint sparkle showed in her half-closed eyes.
“They want to take you from me. We will go on until we drop,” she said.
Larry got into the saddle, though he did not know how he accomplished it, and looked ahead anxiously as he shook the bridle. Away on the rim of the prairie there was a dusky smear, and he knew it was a birch-bluff, which would, if they could reach it, afford them shelter. In the open he would be at the cow-boys’ mercy; but a desperate man might at least check some of the pursuers among the trees, and he was not sure that Torrance, whose years must tell, would be among them. There was a very faint hope yet.
They went on at a gallop, though the horses obtained at Windsor were already jaded, and very slowly the bluff grew higher. Glancing over his shoulder, Grant saw a few moving objects straggle across the crest of the rise. They seemed to grow plainer while he watched them, and more appeared behind.
“We will make the bluff before them,” he said hoarsely. “Ride!”
He drove his heels home; but the beast he rode was flagging fast when, knowing how Torrance’s cow-boys were mounted, he glanced behind again. He could see them distinctly now, straggling, with wide hats bent by the wind and jackets fluttering, across the prairie. Here and there a rifle-barrel glinted, and the beat of their horses’ hoofs reached him plainly. One, riding furiously a few lengths ahead of the foremost, he guessed was Clavering, and he fancied he recognized the Sheriff in another; but he could not discern Torrance anywhere. He turned his eyes ahead and watched the bluff rise higher, though the white levels seemed to flit back to him with an exasperating slowness. Beyond it a faint grey smear rose towards the blue; but the jaded horse demanded most of his attention, for the sod was slippery here and there where the snow had lain in a hollow, and the beast stumbled now and then.
Still, the birches were drawing nearer, and Hetty holding ahead of him, though the roar of hoofs behind him told that the pursuers were coming up fast. He was not certain yet that he could reach the trees before they came upon him, and was clawing with one hand at his rifle when Hetty cried out faintly:
“There are more of them in front.”