"Seen him go up towards the store a while ago, Davey," Salt Watson said slowly.
No one smelt mischief brewing quicker than he. He had seen McNab's face. He knew Young Davey's temper and the sort of man he was growing. He knew Conal, too, and that no love was lost between them. It was an urgent matter would send Davey looking through the town for Conal that way, he guessed, and knowing something of the business they had in hand, as an old roadster always does, imagined the cause of the urgency.
McNab looked as if Davey's anxiety to find Conal had taught him something too.
Davey flung out of the bar. He straddled his horse again and went flying off down the road to the store.
Conal was not there. Someone said he had been, and set out for the hills an hour earlier. Davey made off down the road again, doubling on his track, past the Black Bull. He thought that he would catch up to Conal on the road, and that they would be back at Steve's before M'Laughlin and his men were out of Wirreeford.
The culvert over the creek that he had watched Bess shy at and take in her own leisurely fashion a week before, was not half a mile from the outskirts of the township. The creek banks on either side were fringed I with wattles and light-woods. As the mare rattled across it there was a whistling crack in the air. Davey pitched on her neck. Terrified, she leapt forward. He clung to her, swaying for a while, yet never losing his grip.
He knew that someone had shot him from the trees by the culvert. There was a sharp pain in his breast; blood welled from it.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The little red horse's pace was as swift as a swallow's. Sure-footed, she flashed on over the long winding roads, up the steep hillsides and down them, slipping and sliding on the loose shingles, but keeping her knees in the cunning way that only the mountain horses know. Davey heard the beat of her hoofs until the sound became mechanical. Though she was moving, she seemed to get no further—to throw no distance behind her, forging ahead through the darkness.