He leaned forward in the saddle searching the distance for the identity of the oncoming horseman. His horse shot forward, and Bill’s was hard put to it to keep pace.
“Can’t we shout a warning?” cried Bill, caught in his brother’s anxious excitement.
“Warning be damned,” snapped Charlie over his shoulder. “This is no time to be shouting around. We don’t——Hallo! He’s realized where he’s heading. He’s——. Oh, the hopeless, seven sorts of damned idiot. Look! Look at that! There he goes. Poor devil, what a smash. Hurry up!”
The two men made a further call upon their horses, urged by the sight of the horseman beyond the slough. He had crashed headlong into the half-dry watercourse at the very edge of the culvert.
The man’s disaster was quite plain, even at that distance. He had evidently been unaware of his danger in leaving the trail for a cross-country run to avoid those he saw approaching him. As he came down to the slough, all too late he had realized whither he was heading. Then, instead of keeping on, and taking his chances of getting through the mire, he had made a frantic effort to swing his horse aside and regain the culvert. His reckless speed had been his undoing. His impetus had been so great that the poor beast under him had only the more surely plunged to disaster, from the very magnitude of its effort to avoid it.
Charlie was the first to reach the culvert. In a moment he was out of the saddle.
The stranger’s floundering horse struggled, and finally scrambled to its feet. The rider was close beside it, but lay quite still where he had fallen. To Charlie’s critical eye there was little doubt as to what had happened. The adjacency of the edge of the culvert warned him of what had befallen. The rider must have struck it as he fell.
As Bill dismounted he pointed at the stranger’s horse.
“Grab it,” cried Charlie. The next moment was kneeling beside the fallen man.
Then, in a moment, the wondering Bill, looking on, beheld a sight he would never forget.