For, no sooner had Sandy and Pinky heard the first words of her reply than they leaped their ponies forward and were racing over the plains before the permission was fairly out of her mouth.
Being mounted on the fleetest horses that the Double Cross boasted, they traveled fast, sparing neither their horses nor themselves in their desire to join the other avengers as soon as possible.
From afar, they caught sight of the fire sweeping over the bottoms.
“They’ve trailed the fiend and are trying to burn him out!” cried the foreman, in exultation. “Come on, man, ride like the old Nick, so we can be in at the killing!”
All eagerness, the two cowpunchers rode with quirt and spur.
Scarce two miles away were they when they suddenly beheld a figure dart from the underbrush, scan the plains before him hastily and then make a dash for the bunch of ponies standing to the South.
“That’s the raider! He’s got away from them! Ride him down!” yelled Pinky.
But, even as he spoke, the daredevil renegade, as the reader knows, had leaped upon one of the ponies, and, waving his arms, scattered the others to the four points of the winds.
An instant later, Bowser and the other avengers, who had been outwitted by Scalping Louie, dashed from the swamps and began their frantic but futile firing at the fugitive, which they quickly forsook, as the reader knows, in order to save their own lives.
A moment, Sandy and his companion, never slackening their pace, hesitated whether to go in pursuit of the raider or to ride to the relief of their friends.