"Ay, when you say the word."
"Let go!"
As the boys leaped back the colt darted forward at full speed, wildly lashing out with his hind feet, and in a twinkling the animal and his rider were lost to view in the gloom.
"She will have earned Captain Dillard's life, whether it be saved or not; but it will be at the expense of her own, for there is not a man in the Carolinas who can keep that beast on this mountain trail."
"It would have been better if we had not met her," Evan said gloomily, "for then she would have been forced to go back, instead of riding to her death as she is now doing."
To this Nathan made no reply, and while one might have counted twenty the two lads stood on the trail in the darkness as if there was nothing more for them to do this night.
It was Evan who first aroused himself to a full realization of the situation, and he said, much like one who awakes from a troubled dream:
"It is not for us to waste precious time here, Nathan. Believing that Sarah Dillard cannot gain Greene's Spring, we must press forward at the best of our ability, for there is a slight hope we may arrive in time to give the alarm, although it hardly seems possible at this moment."
"You are right, Evan, and from this instant there shall be no halting," Nathan cried, as he set out with a regular, swinging gait, which promised to carry him at a speed of not less than three miles an hour.
Now, being fully convinced that the safety of Colonel Clarke's men depended entirely upon themselves, they hastened onward without thought of fatigue, making no halt save now and then when they stopped to refresh themselves with water from a mountain stream.