McGlory, it will be remembered, had worked upon the theory that the Chinaman, eager to get as far from the road as possible, had gone over the hill. But this was incorrect. Sam Wing hustled along the hillside slope, his course paralleling the valley and the road.
Very early in the chase the Chinaman lost his grass sandals, and a little later his stockings, but loss of his footwear seemed to help rather than diminish his speed.
Motor Matt was "no slouch" as a long-distance runner, but Sam Wing proved a handful for him. From time to time Matt would gain, coming so close to the hustling Celestial that he shouted a call for him to stop, but the Chinaman, gathering himself together for a spurt, ducked away to his usual lead, and the chase went merrily on.
Once Matt nearly had him. A section of treacherous bank broke away under Sam Wing's feet, and the pursued man flung up his arms and dropped straight downward. Matt paused on the brink and looked below for three or four yards to a little shelf gouged from the bankside. Sam Wing, scarred and apparently senseless, was lying sprawled on the shelf.
Matt slipped and slid downward, fairly certain that he was at the end of his exciting trail; but, just as his feet struck the shelf, the Chinaman rolled over the edge and carromed away in a break-neck descent that finally plunged him into the road.
This was the identical road that led past the spring, and Matt and Sam Wing were somewhere between the spring and Gardenville. Where Martin was with the automobile, Matt did not know, but if Martin had been at that point in the road when the Chinaman rolled into it, an easy capture could have been made.
There was some one in the road besides Sam Wing, however, and the traveler was an old colored man, riding toward Gardenville on a mule. The mule and the colored man were about a hundred feet away from Wing when he got to his feet. As soon as the Chinaman's eyes rested on the long-eared brute and its aged rider, he started at speed in their direction.
Matt jumped into the road with less than twenty-five feet between himself and Sam Wing. Once more he deceived himself with the idea that the chase was narrowing to a close.
The mule, throwing its head and swinging its long ears, was ambling leisurely along the way. The old darky appeared to be in a doze.
Matt, divining Sam Wing's intentions, gave vent to a warning yell. The darky aroused himself and flung a look over his shoulder. But it was too late, for Wing had already grabbed him by one of his dangling feet. Another moment and the negro had been roughly pulled into the road. Wing scrambled to the mule's back and dug into the animal with his naked heels. Probably the mule was as startled as his former rider, for he broke into a lumbering lope.