Merely minutes transpired in that eight-mile race to Yavapai. Bayard's idea was to hire the one automobile of which the town boasted, start down the valley road that Lytton and Ann must follow to reach the mine, overtake and turn them back, somehow, on some pretext. He could arrange the device later; he could think of the significance of Ann's appeal to him when the man between them was free from the danger of which Bayard was aware; his whole thought now was to beat time, to reach town with the least possible waste of seconds. The steel sinews, the leather lungs, the great heart of the beast under him responded nobly to this need. They stormed along the wagon tracks when they held straight, thundered through the unmarked grass and over rocks when the highway turned and twisted. Once, when they ran through a shallow wash and Abe climbed the far side with a scramble, fire shot from his shoes and Bruce cried,
"You're th' stallion shod with fire, boy!"
It was a splendid, unfaltering run, and, when the rider swung down before the little corrugated iron building that housed Yavapai's motor car, the stallion was black with water and his breath came and went with the gasps of fatigue and nervous tension.
Bruce turned from his horse and stepped toward the open door of the garage. A man was there, behind the car, looking dolefully down at an array of grease covered parts that littered the floor.
"Jimmy, I want you to take me out on th' Valley road this mornin'. How soon can we get away?"
"It won't be this mornin' or this afternoon, Bruce," the man said, with a shake of his head. "I've got a busted differential."
"Can't it be fixed?"—misgiving in his voice.
"Not here. I have to send to Prescott for a new one. I'll be laid up a couple of days anyhow."
Bayard did not answer. Just stood trying to face the situation calmly, trying to figure his handicap.
"Is it awful important, Bruce?" the man asked, struck by the cowman's attitude.