Unconscious and bleeding the bonanza-hunter lay, corpse-like, on the strong neck underneath which his rough hands were tightly clasped.
Out into the soft moonlight beyond the mouth of the gulch, went the animal with undiminished speed down the road to Custer until, having galloped through the woe-begone suburbs of the mining-town, he was checked by several iron hands before the hotel.
Flecked with foam, wild-eyed and panting heavily, the steed elicited a thousand ejaculations of wonder and surprise. The excited men, a score of whom belonged to Maverick Joe’s Vigilantes, felt that the demons of Cut-throat had sent the horse on his awful gallop, and the marks of the cord, still visible on the driver’s neck, confirmed their belief.
But what had taken Old Jack from the stage stables so soon after his arrival?
They carried him into the bar-room and examined his wounds. They found a bullet-hole in the right breast and a furrow in his neck, as if the last pellet had actually cut the fatal string loose.
Old Jack was subjected to some rough surgery, but it had the desired effect. He opened his eyes in the midst of the rough crowd burning to question him.
“What took me to Cut-throat?” he said. “Mebbe I dropped a valuable package from the stage. Would ye believe thet?”
“No!” said Maverick Joe, a little man, wiry, dark-faced and with eyes full of fox-like cunning. “You don’t lose freight in Cut-throat, Jack. Suthin’ else took you down thar.”
“Suthin’ else did,” confessed Jack. “But I didn’t get it.”
“Who did you see?”