Behind him, he heard a shrill scream of pain and realized that Dayton had not been so fortunate.
"Has he been killed?" thought Nat as his pony, terrified beyond all control by the uproar behind it, tore up the trail in a series of long bounds.
"Safe!" thought the lad as he dashed onward. But in this he was wrong. Nat was far from being safe yet.
Even as he murmured the word to himself there came a chorus of shouts from behind. Turning in his saddle, the boy could see pursuing him six or seven men, mounted on wiry ponies, racing toward the wreckage of the ponderous man-trap. With quirt and spur they urged their frightened animals over the obstruction. From the midst of the débris Nat could see Dayton crawling. The man was evidently hurt, but the others paid no attention to him.
"A thousand dollars to the one who brings that boy down!"
The cry came in the voice of Col. Morello.
Nat laid his quirt on furiously. But the pony he bestrode had been used for hunting over the rugged mountains most of that day and soon it began to flag.
"They're gaining on me," gasped Nat, glancing behind.
At the same instant half a dozen bullets rattled on the rocks about him, or went singing by his ears. As the fusillade pelted around him, Nat saw, not more than a hundred yards ahead, the end of the trail. The point, that is, where it lost itself in the wilderness of chaparral and piñon trees, among which he had met the adventure which ended in his capture. If he could only gain that shelter, he would be safe. But on his tired, fagged pony, already almost collapsing beneath him, could he do it?