"I'm afraid not," I shouted. "Still, if I kill the horse under me, I'm going to try. He's carrying a good many poor men's money."
A hurried calculation had proved conclusively that if the train were punctual I should miss it by more than an hour, and there was, of course, not another until the following day. Still, it was a long climb from Vancouver City up through the mountains of British Columbia to the Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies, and there then remained a wide breadth of prairie for the mammoth locomotives to traverse. Sometimes, when the load was heavy, they lost an hour or two on the wild up-grade through the cañons. I was ignorant of legal procedure, but greatly feared that my non-appearance in the court would entail the forfeiture of the sureties, and, as the session was near an end, postpone the trial indefinitely. Therefore the train must be caught if it were in the power of horseflesh to accomplish it, and I settled myself to ride as for my life.
"Wouldn't the Port Arthur freight do?" shouted Steel.
"No," I answered. "It's the Atlantic Express or nothing! You can pick those things up on your homeward journey."
Without checking the beast I managed to loosen the valise strapped before me, and hurled it down upon the prairie. It contained all I possessed in the shape of civilized apparel except what I rode in, and that was mired all over from the flounder through the creek; but the horse already carried weight enough. It was now blazing noon, and in the prairie summer the sun is fiercely hot. Here and there the bitter dust of alkali rolled across the waste, crusting our dripping faces and the coats of the lathered beasts. My eyelashes grew foul and heavy, blurring my vision, so that it was but dimly I saw the endless levels crawl up from the far horizon. A speck far down in the distance grew into the altitude of a garden plant, and, knowing what it must be, I pressed my heels home fiercely, waiting for what seemed hours until it should increase into a wind-dwarfed tree.
It passed. There was nothing but the dancing heat to break the great monotony of grass, while the gray streak where it cut the sky-line rolled steadily back in mockery of our efforts to reach it. Yet I was soaked in perspiration, and Steel was alkali white. There was a steady trickle into my eyes, and the taste of salt in my mouth, while the drumming of hoofs rose with a staccato thud-thud, like distant rifle fire, and the springy rush of the beasts beneath us showed how fast we were traveling. Steel shook his head as we raced up a rise which had tantalized me long, stirrup to stirrup and neck to neck, while the clots from the dripping bits drove past like flakes of wind-whirled snow.
"If you want to get there, Ormesby, this won't do," he said. "You'd break the heart of the toughest beast inside another hour."
"The need would justify a worse loss," I panted, snatching out my watch. "We have pulled up thirty minutes, but are horribly behind still. Men who can't afford to lose it have put up the stakes I am riding for."
Steel made a gesture of comprehension, but once more shook his head. "My beast's the better, and he's carrying a lighter weight, but he'll never last at the pace we're making. Save your own a little, and when he's dead beat I'll let up and change with you. I'll hang on in the meantime in case one of them comes to grief over a badger-hole. It's your one chance if you're bent on getting through."
I would at that moment have gladly sold the rest of my life for the certainty of catching the train. To give my enemy no advantage was a great thing, and I felt that absence when my name was called would prejudice the most confiding against me. But that was, after all, a trifle compared with what I owed the men who had probably stripped themselves of necessities to help me, and I felt that if I failed them a shame which could never be dissipated would follow me. Nevertheless, Steel's advice was sound, and I tightened my grip on the bridle with a smothered imprecation. Then my heart grew heavier, for the horse needed no pulling, and responded with an ominous alacrity.