“That’s the gang we’ve been hunting through five counties. Boy, you’ve done what the State’s been trying a long time to do. The reward’s a good lump; if we bag the game you shall have your share.”
Billy looked on wide-eyed, as the Doctor said with a puzzling smile, “And, Sheriff, if I don’t think you divide fair with my friend here, you’ve got me to deal with next election. See?”
“All right, Doc,” the other replied a bit gruffly; “suppose we catch ’em before we fight about the divvy.”
It took a very short time to gather the posse, instruct it, and set out for the mountain. The Sheriff gave Billy an old hat and bade him to a seat behind the swift horses; and Billy obeyed, feeling a strange elation as they set out. It was just like a story. Could it be he, plain Billy Bennett, that was assisting the State to find long-sought-for criminals? The horses flew, yet Billy thought they would never arrive at the turn in the road where they would leave them. He felt as if in some unknown way the man at the hut would surely know of their coming, would hide, destroy, perhaps carry off all that would convict him, and the other, the big man,— Oh, would they never be there?
But a different and sudden fear leaped in both hearts as they rounded the shoulder of the mountain. The air had rapidly grown more oppressive; now they knew the cause, the forest was on fire!
June had been unusually warm and dry, and careless early campers had already started their annual conflagrations. Now high over the crest of the mountain the flames came sweeping down; came with the wind from the valley on the other side where they had raged till fuel was exhausted.
“Great Scott, boy! We’ll have to hurry. We must get up there before the fire gets down. Do you know the shortest way?”
“Yes,” Billy answered breathlessly as he leaped from the buggy; “but we’ll have to go in the way I did if you want to catch ’em sure. We can come out by the trail.”
They tied the horses, and once hidden from the road, shed every superfluous garment. Billy was quite ashamed of the chill he could not help when he saw the handcuffs, pistols, and cartridges disposed neatly and conveniently about the Sheriff’s waist. They looked so vicious, “disrespectable.”
The heat and smoke increased alarmingly as they went on, the man puffing at the boy’s pace. In and out, occasionally doubling and returning but never losing altitude, Billy crashed on. His slender body slipped through underbrush by way of small apertures that would not admit the man’s greater bulk; he had to break his way. The boy, also accustomed to running, climbing, had the advantage of better breath; though the other could not, Billy still held his mouth shut against the suffocating smoke, kept his smarting eyes partly closed.