“You the captain of this guard?”
“Yes,” said Hale; “and you?” Rufe shook his head with angry impatience, and Hale, thinking he had some communication to make, ignored his refusal to answer.
“I hear that a fellow can't blow a whistle or holler, or shoot off his pistol in this town without gittin' arrested.”
“That's true—why?” Rufe's black eyes gleamed vindictively.
“Nothin',” he said, and he turned to his horse.
Ten minutes later, as Mockaby was passing down the dummy track, a whistle was blown on the river bank, a high yell was raised, a pistol shot quickly followed and he started for the sound of them on a run. A few minutes later three more pistol shots rang out, and Hale rushed to the river bank to find Mockaby stretched out on the ground, dying, and a mountaineer lout pointing after a man on horseback, who was making at a swift gallop for the mouth of the gap and the hills.
“He done it,” said the lout in a frightened way; “but I don't know who he was.”
Within half an hour ten horsemen were clattering after the murderer, headed by Hale, Logan, and the Infant of the Guard. Where the road forked, a woman with a child in her arms said she had seen a tall, black-eyed man with a black moustache gallop up the right fork. She no more knew who he was than any of the pursuers. Three miles up that fork they came upon a red-headed man leading his horse from a mountaineer's yard.
“He went up the mountain,” the red-haired man said, pointing to the trail of the Lonesome Pine. “He's gone over the line. Whut's he done—killed somebody?”
“Yes,” said Hale shortly, starting up his horse.