As the black mass of frightened beasts gathered forward headway and shot through the area of light, Kendric saw one horseman clearly. On the instant he threw up his rifle. Already his finger was crooking to the trigger when, with a mutter of rage, he lowered his arm. There was no mistaking that great white horse and he thought that there was as little mistaking its rider, a slender, upright figure leading the rush of the raiders, calling out sharp orders in the clear ringing voice, sweeping on recklessly. He cursed her but he held back his fire. Of women he knew little enough and for women there had been no place reserved in his life; but, for all that and all that Zoraida Castlemar might be and might do, he had not learned to lift his hand against her sex.
But there was nothing in what Bruce saw to restrain him. He fired while his rifle was rising to his shoulder and again and again with the stock against his cheek.
"Damn the light!" he growled, and fired again.
Through the tumult Kendric heard her laughter. None other than Zoraida could laugh like that. Again the suspicion flashed into his quickened brain that the girl was mad. He heard several shots behind him; Bruce's men were taking a hand. Then, close behind the white mare came a second horseman and Kendric thanked God for a man for a target and fired at it. Luck if he hit it, he told himself, at that distance and running and in that flickering light. But he fired again, ran in closer and fired the third time. And just as the white mare passed on through the illumed area and was lost in the dark with its rider he saw his man pitch forward and plunge to the ground. Other forms swept by, other shots were fired both from the outlaws and toward them. The darkness accepted them all and no other man fell.
Shouts floated back to them above the hammering thud of the fleeing cows and horses. Into the darkness after them Bruce and Kendric and Bruce's men sent many questing bullets while now and then an answering leaden pellet screamed over their heads. Swiftly the clamor of the receding hoof-beats lessened; no voices returned to them; no wild rider was to be seen. The night pulsed only to the barks of the dogs and the roar of the devastating flames.
Bruce was calling loudly to his men to get to horse and follow. But while he spoke he broke off hopelessly realizing that not a horse was left to him. Before he and his herders could get into saddle they must wait for daylight and must waste hours in driving in horses from the distant pastures, wild brutes for the most part that a man could never get near enough on foot to rope. He threw out his arms in a wide gesture of despair. Thereafter he stood, silent and moody, watching his hay-filled barns burn.
"If I could get my hands on the man that engineered this," he said, his voice broken, barely carrying to Kendric a few paces away. "That's all I ask."
Kendric, his rage scarcely less than Bruce's, called back to him:
"I could lead you as straight as a string. It's the handiwork of your neighbor."
"Rios?" cried Bruce eagerly.