The frogs were croaking in the nearby meadow. The sound jarred on his tense nerves.
“I say, sir, be this the road to Occoquan?”
They had met some one! Rodney stopped his horse and listened. A horse whinnied, and Nat lifted his 165 head to reply when a touch from the spur changed his mind.
A clear voice rang out, “Back, you knaves! Take your hands off that bridle!”
A girl’s scream and sounds of a struggle came to the lad’s ears, and he spurred ahead.
Near the corners of the roads, though now dusk had fallen, he discerned two riders on horses that were rearing and plunging. One of the riders, a man, was plying his whip over the head of the fellow who clung to his bridle; on the other horse was a girl struggling with a rascal who was trying to pull her from the animal’s back. Rodney turned his attention to this one.
Not daring to fire, through fear of hitting the girl, he rode straight at the miscreant and, clubbing his pistol, struck him over the head what proved to be but a slight blow, for the man dodged, but his hold was broken and he staggered back, and Nat trampled over him. His accomplice, seeing this, fled. The girl hung by the side of her horse, one foot in the stirrup and both hands clutching his mane. Thoroughly frightened, he plunged ahead and ran wildly down the road.
“She will be dashed to death!” was the thought which flashed through Rodney’s mind and, wheeling his horse, he spurred after the fleeing thoroughbred, the girl’s companion galloping behind.
The spirit of a racing ancestry, and the cruel rowels, drove Nat close on the flanks of the runaway. Could he overtake and pass him?