But there was no time now for feeling, no time for regrets. The pursuers had found his trail, and were hard upon his heels. The cargo must go. Everything must go. Personal safety was the only thing to be considered. From the confidence of victory now he had fallen to the zero of certain failure.
He pulled his sweating team up and sprang to the ground. He ran up to the saddle horse, and, casting the neck-rope loose from the neck yoke, looped it over the horn of the saddle. The next moment he was in the saddle and racing over the grassland in the direction of the village.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE NIGHT TRAIL
The trail declined over a long, gradual slope. At the bottom of it was a broad, almost dried-out slough. A wooden culvert spanned the reed-grown watercourse. Then the trail made a sharpish ascent beyond, and lost itself behind a distant bush, beyond which again stretched out a broad expanse of grass.
Two horsemen were speeding down the longer slope. Their horses were fresh and full of speed. There was no speech passing between them. Eyes and ears were alert, and their grimly set faces gave warning of the anxious thought teeming through their brains.
The indications of the night were nothing to them. The trail might ring with the beat of their horses’ hoofs, or only reply with the soft thud of a deep, sandy surface. They were not out to consider either their horses or themselves. Each knew that his journey was one of desperate emergency, and one of them, at least, cared nothing what might be his sacrifice, even if it were life itself.
The horses came down the hill with a headlong rush. Loose reins told of the men’s feelings, and the creatures, themselves, as though imbued with something of their riders’ spirits, abandoned themselves to the race with equal recklessness.
Halfway down the hill the foremost of the two, the smaller and slighter, abruptly flung a word across his shoulder to his companion behind.