He rose from the stump on which he had sat down to think things over and resumed his search for the stray ponies. As he moved along he munched his bread and chocolate, taking his lunch “on the hoof,” so to speak.
Before long he struck the trail of the missing ponies once more. This time it soon led him into a swampy country and he followed it rapidly. Along the floor of the valley he went till suddenly, on coming around a pile of great rocks, hurled from the summit of the ridge in some prehistoric convulsion, he saw something that gave him a big surprise. In a little clearing stood a ruinous log cabin, and tethered outside it was one of the missing ponies!
Of the other there was no trace. All at once Ralph heard a scrambling and clambering among the rocks above him on the steep hillside. He glanced quickly and just in time to see the mysterious man remounted on the other pony, rapidly urging it away from the hut.
“Stop thief!” yelled Ralph, carried away by excitement. “Come back here!”
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted the next instant throbbing with indignation.
He had no intention of hitting the fugitive, but he did mean to frighten him into stopping if he could. For an instant the form of the stolen pony and its rider became visible among the trees through which the afternoon sun was sending down oblique shafts of light.
Ralph raised his rifle, sighted it to carry a bullet well above the fugitive’s head and fired.
“The next will come closer,” he warned; but the next minute all other thoughts were rushed abruptly out of his mind when a bullet whizzed by his head close enough to fan his ear. The ping-g-g-g-g-g-g of the ball as it sped by, ruffling his hair, did not appeal to Ralph. Evidently the fugitive was a dead shot and was not inclined to be pursued if he could avoid it by putting his tracker out of the way.
“Jove!” exclaimed Ralph as he slipped behind a tree trunk, “that bullet was a message meant for me, all right. I don’t care to be at home to such callers.”
He listened an instant and then came the sound of the pony’s hoofs making off at a good pace through the trackless forest.