“Shall we go back and play around 'em, boy?” asked Barry.
Black Bart had run on ahead, and now he turned with a short howl.
“The partner says 'no,'” continued the master. “Of all the dogs I ever see, Bart plays the most careful game, but out on the trail, Satan”—here he sent the stallion into the sweeping lope—“Bart knows more'n you an' me put together, so we'll do what he says.”
For answer, Satan lengthened a little into his stride. As for the wolf-dog, he went off like a black bolt into the eye of the wind, streaking it west to hunt out the easiest course. A wolf—and surely there was more of wolf than of dog in Black Bart—has a finer sense for the lay of ground than anything on four feet. He knows how to come down the wind on his quarry keeping to the depressions and ravines so that not a taint of his presence is blown to the prey; and he will skulk across an open plain, stealing from hollow to hollow and stalking from bush to bush, so that the wariest are taken by surprise. As for Black Bart, he knew the kind of going which the stallion liked as well, almost, as he knew his own preferences, and he picked out a course which a surveyor with line and spirit-level could hardly have bettered. He wove across the country in loosely thrown semicircles, and came back in view of the master at the proper point. There was hardly much point in such industry in a country as smooth as this, not much more difference, say, than the saving of distance which the horse makes who hugs the fence on the turn and on account of that sticks his head under the finish wire a nose in front; and Bart clung to his work with scrupulous care.
Sometimes he ran back with lolling, red tongue, when the course lay clear even to the duller sense of a human, and frisked under the nose of Satan until a word from Barry sent him scurrying away like a pleased child. His duties comprehended not only the selection of the course but also an eagle vigilance before and behind, so that when he came again with a peculiar whine, Barry leaned a little from the saddle and spoke to him anxiously.
“D'you mean to say that they been gainin' ground on us old boy?”
Black Bart leaped sidewise, keeping his head toward the master, and he howled in troubled fashion.
“Whereaway are they now?” muttered Barry, and looked back again.
A great distance behind, hardly distinguishable now, the dust of the posse was blending into the landscape and losing itself against a gray background.
“If they's nothin' wrong behind, what's bitin' you, Bart. You gettin' hungry, maybe? Want to hurry home?”