The Indian protested:
"What's the use?"
"Use? The scoundrel must be punished!"
Simon went off at a gallop, followed by one of the Indian's companions, the one who rode the fourth horse and whose name he did not know. Almost immediately, at five hundred yards ahead, on the ridge of the hills, a man rose from the cover of some blocks of stone and made away at the top of his speed.
Two minutes later, Simon reached these blocks and exclaimed:
"I see him! He's going around the lake which we crossed. Let's make straight for him."
He descended the farther slope and forced his horse into the water, which, at this point, covered a layer of mud so deep that the two riders had some difficulty in getting clear of it. When they reached the opposite shore, the fugitive, seeing that there were only two of them, turned round, threw up his rifle and covered them:
"Halt," he commanded, "or I fire!"
Simon was going too fast and could not pull up.
At the moment when the shot rang, he was at most twenty yards from the murderer. But another rider had leapt between them and was holding his horse, reared on its hind legs, like a rampart in front of Simon. The animal was hit in the belly and fell.