While Bull stood on gaze at the distant mountains he shook with the chill of a great fear. His question issued in a whisper so low and husky that the agent took the meaning from his gesture toward the hills.
“The bandits moved toward the señor Lovell’s.” He answered. “Praise the saints! the señoritas are both in El Paso.”
“Then they’ll go straight on to Mary’s!” The last vestige of color drained from Bull’s face.
Leaping the intervening mountains, imagination showed him that trickle of foul humanity dribbling down upon the rancho. He saw Mary Mills on the veranda, Betty pressed to her side. But in place of the hope and trust of his previous visions pale horror sat on her face. Obliterating the sweet wholesomeness that surrounded her like an aura, the dirty dribble swept around her and the child.
He turned to the agent. “My horse? Did they get him?”
“No, señor, I had my mozo drive all the beasts into the chaparral.” He pointed eastward. “Come!”
Half an hour later the mozo shoved a shock head out of the chaparral in answer to the agent’s whistle, and five minutes thereafter Bull was on trail, riding hard through a dread nightmare, insensible to the glare of the sun, suffocating heat, conscious only of the terrors that coursed through his mind.
In these dread visions Lee had no part. She had Gordon and Sliver and Jake! His fear centered on Mary Mills and her child. Often, in sudden agony, he would dig in the spurs and rowel his beast into a mad gallop. But always his better judgment checked the mad impulse. Reining in, he would proceed at a gait that would keep the animal running to the end. At least, he so rode until, passing into the grass country that afternoon, he saw a tall smoke column rising on the shoulder of a mountain ahead.
He recognized it at once for one of the smoke signals arranged by Benson to spread the news of a raid, and as he saw that it rose in direct line with the widow’s rancho his fears crystallized around its slender column. Beyond peradventure, the place had been attacked. Jaws clenched till the bones stood out white through the flesh, black brows bent in bitter desperation, he urged on his frothing beast.
Whether he came in from Los Arboles or the railroad, distance always timed Bull’s arrival at the rancho with the lowering of the sun. As he urged his jaded beast at a shambling trot over the last rise his shadow lay long and black on the rich apricot glow of the slope. Long ago the ominous cloud had died on the mountain’s high shoulder; but, more ominous still, a lighter column had risen in the foreground. Though prepared, a hoarse sob unlocked his set jaws as he came in sight of the place.