A THRILLING RESCUE.
No sooner had he given his suggestion to Sandy than Ki Yi buried the rowels of his spurs in the pony’s flanks and darted after Deadshot.
“Hey, you numbskull, where you going?” shouted the owner of the Double Cross ranch, angrily. “I didn’t give you a mount just to have you go off by yourself. Wait for the rest of us. We’ve got to decide which is the direction to take.”
“Haven’t got time,” retorted the cowboy, exasperatingly. “There’s been too much talk already. I know which way Deadshot went, and he’s on the raider’s trail.”
“Then we’ll follow you,” called the owner of the Star and Moon. And quickly the troop of horsemen leaped their ponies in the wake of Ki Yi.
In the meantime, Deadshot and the lone horseman he was pursuing were dashing over the plains.
Whether he was following his quarry or not, the cowboy from the Double Cross ranch did not know. He had hoped that the raider would continue the running fight with which the chase had opened, thereby enabling him to gauge correctly the exact course the man he was pursuing was taking.
But the fiend who had stolen Bowser’s cattle and burned Hawks’ buildings was far too clever to give his whereabouts away in any such manner.
From the fact that the cowboys had exchanged shots with him—and had come off second best—he realized that the search for him would be unrelenting. In consequence, he was determined they should not know exactly in what direction he was headed. That they would trail the Double Cross steers to the Sangammon swamps, he did not doubt. Yet he believed that, could he enter the bottoms without being seen in the act, he would be able to elude his pursuers and eventually drive out the cattle and sell them.
He forgot, however, that the cause of wrongdoers never enjoys ultimate success.