Rather return to the forsaken ranche, and avail themselves of such shelter as it may afford.
In short, there seems no alternative; and, yielding to the necessity, they rein round, and commence the backward march, every eye glancing gloomily, every brow overcast.
They are all disappointed, most of them surly as bears that had been shot in the head, and have scratched the place to a sore. They are just in the humour to kill anyone, or anything, that should chance in their way.
But there is no one, and nothing; and, in the absence of an object to spend their spite upon, some counsel wreaking it on their captives—the traitor and renegade.
Never during life were these two men nearer their end. To all appearance, in ten minutes more both will be dangling at the end of a rope suspended from a limb of a tree.
They are saved by a circumstance for them at least lucky, if unfortunate for some others.
Just as a half-score of the Rangers have clumped together under a spreading pecan-tree, intending to hang them upon one of its branches, a horse is heard to neigh. Not one of their own, but an animal some way off the track, amid the trees. The hail is at once responded to by the steeds they are bestriding; and is promptly re-answered, not by one horse, but three neighing simultaneously.
A strange thing this, that calls for explanation. What horses can be there, save their own? And none of the Rangers have ridden in the direction whence the “whighering” proceeds.
A dozen of them do so now; before they have gone far, finding three horses standing under the shadow of a large live oak, with three men mounted on their backs, who endeavour to keep concealed behind its broad buttressed trunk.
In vain. Guided by the repeated neighing and continuous tramp of their horses, the Rangers ride up, close around, and capture them.