Then he lashed his long reins against the side of his stallion and sped away down the valley.
Lane followed him, running.
They left an existent millionaire and a prospective governor helplessly grinding the skin from his shoulders against a birch-tree, and bellowing anathema on “lunatics.”
The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt, sweat pouring down his purple face as he raged from crew to crew on the fire-line, was not surprised to behold Prophet Eli emerge from the smoke, riding his ding-swingle. In twenty years Mr. Britt had often beheld the prophet at troublous junctures. In his present state of vehement anxiety the king of the Umcolcus felt his temper flare at sight of this herald of ill-omen.
“Met the Skeets and the Bushees, and they’re still running south. Don’t you think a man with pumple-feet is an infernal fool to try to learn to skate?”
Britt, thrusting past through the underbrush of the tote road, whirled and poised his foot to kick the inoffensive stallion, as mute expression of his rage and contempt. But he withheld the kick at the apparition of “Ladder” Lane. The warden came running. He fairly burst out of the smoke.
That he was pursuing Prophet Eli for no good to the latter occurred to the Honorable Pulaski in one startled flash, as he looked at the warden’s savage face. He stepped between the men. But it was not to protect the prophet, whom he dismissed from his mind as utterly as though the forest sage were a fugitive rabbit. Mr. Britt had a pregnant question to ask of Lane on his own account, and he bellowed it at him, clutching at his arm.
“Where did you leave John Barrett?”
Lane halted at his touch, and glowered on him without reply.