“Spare the savages!” cried Van Alstyne, in consternation. “Honor their flag of truce! But get Fagan!”
Alas! the warning came too late. An ill-aimed shot from a soldier musket struck one of the flying Sacs. For a moment, it seemed that the brave would retain his saddle. He swayed desperately, then caught at the mane of his mount. A second afterward, however, he threw up his hands, raised a quavering death-song, and toppled heavily to the earth, not a breath of life in his coppery body.
As the pursuit continued, it began to look as if the big deserter would make good his escape. The Sac ponies were proving to be faster steppers than the mounts of the military. The gap between the two parties started to widen, almost imperceptibly at first, then more rapidly. Fagan rose in his stirrups, turned about and gave voice to a loud yell of defiance.
“Wahoo!” he cried.
The taunting call was hardly out of his mouth, however, when a hissing bullet struck his pony squarely in the back of the head, penetrating the brain. The speeding beast collapsed instantly, throwing the surprised Fagan forward in a wild, whirling somersault that ended only when he struck the ground ten feet ahead, with a prodigious thud.
“He’s knocked cold!” called Ben Gordon, as he sped up on his sweating horse.
“Good!” said Van Alstyne, checking his mount nearby. “That’ll make him easier to handle. Get a lariat, somebody, and tie him hand and foot! We’ll see that he gets his medicine in a hurry.”
CHAPTER 12
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