Jim Pryse’s final exclamation was flung at his floundering broncho. For one moment the creature seemed to be about to crash headlong. Then the lead-rein securing it to the horn of the policeman’s saddle snapped and released it, and, under the tremendous effort of its rider’s shackled hands, it recovered itself.
The whole catastrophe was wrought on the instant. At one moment both horses were loping leisurely over the virgin carpet of snow, with ears pricked alertly as they peered out into the grey twilight of the storm. The next the policeman’s horse had gone down like a stone, and its rider lay inert, still, a huddled fur-coated heap upon the hard-frozen ground. It was the old story of thawing snow balling in the creature’s hoofs.
The twilight was deepening. It was no longer merely the sombre grey of the snowstorm. It was the gradual passing of the last of the day. The surrounding world was almost blotted out. Here and there were faint outlines, barely perceptible, to mark some woodland bluff in the immediate vicinity; but beyond that there was nothing—nothing but a grey, impenetrable pall of falling snow lolling silently upon the breathless air.
The horses were standing apart. They had no concern for the thing that had happened. They had turned away from the drift of the storm, and stood gently rubbing their frost-rimed muzzles against each other’s sweating sides.
A few yards away Jim Pryse stood with shackled hands, gazing down at the prone figure of the man who had been conveying him to the penitentiary at Calford. There was no sign of life in the fallen man. He lay unmoving, just where he had been hurled from the saddle, and the flakes of falling snow were rapidly obscuring the black outline of his fur-clad body.
For some time the convict’s scrutiny continued. Then, of a sudden, he dropped to his knees and ran his hands over the man’s body. His movements were clumsy by reason of the shackles that held his wrists, but he persisted in his task slowly and deliberately. After a while he stood up. And his hands were grasping the cartridge belt and side-arms he had removed from about the policeman’s body. With much difficulty he bestowed the revolver in the pocket of his fur coat and proceeded to remove the cartridges from the belt. These he stowed away in another pocket. Then he dropped the belt and holster in the snow.
Again he bent over the fallen man. This time it was for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of the latter’s injuries.
But he need not have concerned himself. Corporal McFardell raised his head and looked up at him.
Quick as a flash the convict was on his feet and standing clear.