Startled eyes stared at a white woman, clinging to one of those pads of yellow leather which the English and the riders of park hobbyhorses call a saddle. Her hat was gone and her hair waved a black flag behind with its generous streaming.
Unquestionably her sorrel mount was a thoroughbred and making a pace that only a life-or-death mission could excuse on a course so preempted by prairie-dog towns. This was not sport that he gazed upon, but folly which might at any moment be turned into tragedy.
Then he sighted a broken rein dangling from the useless bit and therefrom deduced the situation. Excited by the chase, the high-strung animal had become a runaway. The woman rider was helpless and in most imminent danger.
A touch of his unspurred heel upon the flanks of Silver caused the gray stallion to spring into action. The lean, powerful body gripped in the sergeant's thighs responded splendidly, and the race was on.
To his own risk from the burrowed habitations of the marmots John Childress gave no thought; he was riding to save the life of a woman. Nor did he pause to consider that the rider ahead was followed by friends, the beat of whose horses crowded upon his ears. He rejoiced that the proven speed of his mount assured his overtaking the runaway if only both beasts might avoid the all-too-many pitfalls presented by the dog-holes.
As he drew near, a cry came back to him from the woman. In the circumstances, any show of fright was excusable, and he readily condoned the frantic-sounding appeal for help. He did not need urging, especially as the fleeting glimpse of the face turned back to him showed the subject for the rescue to be both young and beautiful.
He sent an imprecation after Poison, when the hound, in joining the pack, caused the small wolf to turn sharply. The sorrel thoroughbred, who had forgotten training so completely as to run away, surely remembered to follow the dogs. The swerve with which changed direction was accomplished seemed almost to unseat the rider.
"Some rider, that girl!" The exclamation was wrung from Childress as he saw her regain balance with only the stirrups to aid. "But why the hell will anybody ride a saddle without a horn?" He did not attempt to answer his question into that piece of human folly.
As his own mount made the turn and closed up, his thought centered on the surest method of saving the fair rider. This was an emergency quite outside his varied experience. For a second his glance rested upon the rope coiled over the pummel in front of him. He knew that with this trusted "string" he could stop the stampeder quickly, but such a stop, likely, would mean a dangerous fall for the woman; might utterly defeat, indeed, the purpose of his effort.
There was a safer, surer way if, in her fright, she was capable of giving him the slightest assistance. Riding alongside, he could pluck her to safety, holding her against his flank until the obedient Silver slowed to a stop. But if she insisted on clinging to that joke of a saddle, would his arm have the strength to wrench her from it bodily? At once he decided that the emergency demanded the attempt.