Then came a yell from behind, for in the dawn the hunters had caught sight of their meat.
Now close ahead loomed something white like a ghost, and Jim let out a screech as it reared up against him sudden. As he shied wide and spurred, he saw the ghost some better—a limewashed monument, the boundary mark of old Mexico.
"Saved!" he yelled. "They can't follow beyond the Line."
"They cayn't, but they will," says Curly; "fire the grass!"
Jim grabbed a hair from the buckskin's mane, took matches from his wallet and bound them into a torch, struck a light to the tip, and held it in his paws against the roaring wind. Then he made shift to swing himself down till the long grass brushed his fingers. He dropped his torch beside a greasewood bush, and cantered on with Curly knee to knee. That flicker in the long grass grew to a blazing star, spread with the flaws of the wind, swayed its small tongues to lick new clumps and pass the word to others just beyond. The bush blazed up with a roar as only greasewood can, and flung its burning sticks upon the storm, so that the fire spread swift as a man could run over acres of greasewood. To the east was mesquite bush, which burns like gun-cotton in a gale of wind. But now the draught of the fire had made that gale a scarlet hurricane with the stride of a running horse, which flushed the flying cloud wrack overhead, and made red day along the mountain flanks.
I reckon that if I'd happened with that outfit of hunters, I should have known enough to bear east and circle round the blaze without loss of time; but the leaders saw the burning mesquite grove, and tried to swing west of trouble. There the arroyo barred them, and before they won to the other horn of the fire their horses had gone loco, refusing to face the heat. Anyways, they stampeded with their riders, and I reckon those warriors never stopped to look back until they had thrown themselves safe beyond the railroad. If they had come out for a man-hunt, they got that liberal and profuse beyond their wildest dreams.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FRONTIER GUARDS
Well up to windward of the range fire, that fool horse Jones came to a finish sudden all a-straddle, swaying, nose down, and blood a-dripping. So far Curly had just stayed in the saddle from force of habit, but when the usual motion stopped between his knees he surely forgot to be alive any more, and dropped like a shot bird to grass. As for Jim, he was too stiff to dismount, but the buckskin mare lay down with him complete; so he rolled from the saddle, and managed to stagger around. He uncinched Jones' saddle, eased his mouth of the bit, loosed the mare's girth as she lay, then knelt by Curly feeling him over for wounds. He didn't know until then that Curly had a bullet in the right arm; but all that side was in a mess of dry blood, and when he cut away the coat it began to spurt. He plugged up the hole, made a bandage with his handkerchief, twisted it up with a stick until the blood quit coming, then rolled himself down, dead asleep beside his partner.