Heading the horse toward the trail, he shouted his good-by to Jacks at the top of his lungs, and then urged the horse into a gallop with his heels and the end of the rope hackamore. The Comet slipped, and plunged, and rattled, but Matt supported it with one hand and let the frightened horse take his own gait.
He heard Jacks and Bisbee chasing after him, but was soon so far away that these sounds of pursuit were lost in the distance. A little later he turned into the pack-trail, and the most difficult part of his night journey lay ahead of him.
Matt could have hidden his machine away among the rocks and left it there while he galloped on to Phœnix. There would have been nothing to gain by this move, however, except an easier ride to the Bluebell. The office of the recorder would not be open for business before eight o'clock the next morning, and Matt had plenty of time to reach his destination. If he could get a supply of gasoline at the mine, and found that the Comet could be easily repaired, he would leave the horse with Delray and get back to town on the motor-cycle.
Before Matt had gone far along the pack-trail the difficulties of his position on the horse's back became so great that he was forced to dismount and walk. Even though he could have ridden comfortably, he would soon have been obliged to fall back on his own feet anyway. The trail was rough and hard to follow when it could be plainly seen, and now, when it twisted and turned through black arroyos and clung to the edge of half-hidden chasms, progress could only be safely made by going slowly and carefully.
Leading the horse by the rope, Matt picked out the course with the utmost care. Once he lost the trail and was all of two hours finding it again; then the lashings of the Comet gave way suddenly, and the rear wheel dropped, causing the horse to give a frightened jump that nearly took him over the edge of a steep descent. At the most difficult part of the trail, where it ran along a shelf gouged out of the cliffs, Matt had to unship the wheel and swing it from the other side, in order to keep it from colliding with the rocks and being broken.
Before the barranca and the Black Cañon were reached, a quivering line of gray had run along the tops of the eastern hills. Morning was at hand, and Matt, who had been working like a Turk through the dark hours, was not yet at the Bluebell!
"The Comet has made me a heap of trouble," he muttered, "but I'll take the kinks out of the old girl when we get to the Bluebell, and then there'll be clear sailing all the way to town. It's about time I struck a streak of luck, seems to me. If Delray has any gasoline——"
Matt broke off the remark suddenly, wincing as he thought of an added jaunt of five miles to the canal, leading the horse or pedaling a heavy motor-cycle. If luck ever did anything for him, he hoped it would show itself at the Bluebell.
The sky was bright with coming day when Matt turned into the barranca, and the sun was up when he came in sight of the house and derrick at the Bluebell. There was some one on foot in the road, far away toward the canal. When Matt drew up by the house he saw that the approaching man was Delray.
"I wonder if Del is still gadding about looking for the fellow who smashed the wireless instrument?" thought Matt, setting to work unloading the Comet.