Curly lay all of a heap on the saddle. "Shoot!" he howled, and flashed on across the plain.
Jim got the gallopers stark against the sky at point-blank range, and just whirled in for battle, piling the track with dead and dying horses, blocking the passage complete. Then he streaked away to see if Curly had gone dead on Jones' back.
Five minutes after that, Deputy-Marshal Pedersen and I came blundering into the wreckage. He jumped through somehow, leading eighteen men, but I stopped to help a hurt man, and used his rifle to splint his broken leg. The fool gallopers were mostly wrung out, and gone home, or left afoot by Jim. The good stayers were on ahead, but weary maybe, it being late for pleasuring. So I proceeded to have an attack of robbers all to myself, with the wounded man's revolver and my own, shooting promiscuous. Sure enough, half a dozen of them bold pursuers came circling back to find out what was wrong.
When I had turned back with my idiots for home, a ripple spread along the grass, an air from the south, then a lifting wind, full strong, steady as ice aflow, cold as the wings of Death. Jim fought up wind, battling at full gallop until he overtook the little partner, then ranged abreast and steadied knee to knee, nursing his mare at a trot. The moon slid down flame-red behind the hills, the wind blew a gale, the night went black, the sky a sheet of stars.
Jim had quit being tired, for his body was all gone numb and dead, so he felt nothing except the throb of hoofs astern. Then he heard a popping of guns faint in the rear, and on that saw flashes of signal firing away on the right, besides other gun-flames back below Mule Pass. He held his teeth from chattering to speak.
"Curly, old chap, they've wired for a posse up from Naco, and the City Marshal's men are coming down from Bisley. They're closing in on three sides, and we can't escape."
Curly said nothing.
"Say, Curly, you're not hurt?"
"Mosquito bite," said Curly; "look a-here, Jim. If anything goes wrong, you'll find the captain at La Soledad to-morrow."
"What captain?"