Bruce of the Circle A

by Harold Titus

"Hang on!" she shouted, in a voice shrill with excitement. "Hang on!"

Ann was hanging on with all her strength. She was riding, too, with all the skill at her command; for greater safety she clung to the horn with both hands. She tried to speak to the horse under her, thinking that she might quiet him by words, but the rush of wind whipped the feeble sounds from her lips and their remnants were drowned in the staccatoed drumming of hoofs as the crazed beast, breathing in excited gulps, breasted the hill that led them back toward town, gathering speed with every leap that carried them forward.

Nora, seeing that a runaway was inevitable, cried to her mount and the pony, keyed to flight, sped along behind the other, losing with every length traveled. Tears of fright spilled from the girl's eyes, chilling her cheeks. What might happen was incalculable, she knew.

Then new sounds, above the beat of her horse's hoofs, above the wind in her ears; the sweeping, measured, rolling batter of other hoofs, and Nora turned her head to see Bruce Bayard, mouth set, eyes glowing, brim of his hat plastered back against the crown by his rush, urge his big sorrel horse toward her. He hung low over the fork of his saddle, clear of his seat, tense, yet lithe, and responding to every undulation of the beast that carried him.

From a distance Bayard had seen. He thought at first that Ann had started her pony purposely, but when the animal raced away toward town at such frantic speed, when Ann's hat was whipped from her head, when he heard a distant, faint scream, he knew that no prompting of the woman's had been behind the break. He stretched himself low over Abe's neck and cried aloud, hung in his spurs and fanned the great beast's flanks with his quirt. Never before had the sorrel been called upon so sharply; never before had he felt such a prodding of rowels or lashing of rawhide. Ears back, nose out, limbs flexing and straightening, spurning the roadway with his drumming hoofs, the great animal started in pursuit.

For a mile the road held up hill, following closely the rim of a rise that hung high above the valley to the right. As it rose, the wagon track bent to the left, with the trend of the rim. At the crest of the hill Yavapai would be visible; from there the road, too, could be seen, swinging in a big arc toward the town, which might be reached by travel over a straight line; but that way would lead down an abrupt drop and over footing that was atrocious, strewn with malpais boulders and rutted by many washes.

It was to overtake Ann's runaway before he topped this rise that Bayard whipped his sorrel. He knew what might happen there. The animal that bore the woman was crazed beyond control, beyond his own horse judgment. He was running, and his sole objective was home. Now, he was taking the quickest possible route and the moment he struck the higher country he might leave the road and go straight for Yavapai, plunging down the sharp point that stood three hundred feet above the valley, and making over the rocks with the abandon of a beast that is bred and reared among them. Well enough to run over rough ground at most times, but in this insane going the horse would be heedless of his instinctive caution, sacrificing everything for speed. He might fall before he reached the valley floor, he might lose his footing at any yard between there and town, and a fall in that ragged, volcanic rock, would be a terrible thing for a woman.

Abe responded superbly to the urging. He passed Nora's pony in a shower of gravel. His belly seemed to hang unbelievably close to the ground, his stride lengthened, his tail stood rippling behind him, his feet smote the road as though spitefully and he stretched his white patched nose far out as if he would force his tendons to a performance beyond their actual power. But he could not make it; the task of overcoming that handicap in that distance was beyond the ability of blood and bone.

As he went on, leap by leap, and saw that his gaining was not bringing him beside Ann in time, Bayard commenced to call aloud to the horse under him, and his eyes grew wide with dread.

His fears were well grounded. As though he had planned it long before, as if the whole route of his flight had been preconceived, the black pony swung to the right as he came up on level ground. He cut across the intervening flat and, ears back, hindquarters scrooching far under his body as he changed his gait for the steep drop, he disappeared over the rim.