Presently the red men tried different tactics—they swerved, one to the right and the other to the left, and each belabored his pony with renewed vigor, each possibly hoping to gain fast enough so that the grim rider behind would take up the pursuit of the other.
This was apparently what the pursuer had been looking for, for his heels now went up, and the length and rapidity of the stride of the powerful horse increased.
Rapidly now the distance was annihilated. But the Indians were pulling apart, and he must soon select between them.
Then the rifle which had laid idly across the white man’s knees jumped to his shoulder. For an instant it was held there, a part of the bobbing pantomime, and then a yellow spurt left the muzzle, and instantly one of the Indians threw up his arms, and with a wild yell pitched from the back of his mustang.
The white man’s rifle dropped across his knees again, and the great horse swept harder and closer on the trail of the other red man.
Pursued and pursuer now tore away into the southeast, the relentless white man sitting unmoved as the Indian frantically loaded and fired at his pursuer.
And at last, with pursued and pursuer like ants on the sky line, Price, the former Indian agent in the Gallatin Valley, and his guilty companion, Bloody Ike, saw the close of the tragedy.
There was a sudden halt of the pursuer, a rigid erectness for an instant, a white puff, and the second Indian plunged from the back of his staggering pony, but no sound of shot or death yell came back over the intervening distance.
They had witnessed one of the many tragedies of those wild days in the great West—the days of an eye for an eve and a tooth for a tooth; the days when revenge was as sweet as ever and recognized in this ungoverned region as the right of man.
Slowly the bewhiskered white rider came back over the trail, and noting the presence of human beings at the old shanty rode down to greet them with: