“It is well you heard them; it makes their course unmistakable. We know we are on their track. Seven or eight full hours! It is long odds of a start. But they are not mounted as we are mounted. They did not ride as we shall ride. They had a woman to carry, and their mules to drive. They will fear pursuit, and push on without stopping. But we shall catch them; we shall catch them before night, so help us God!”
“You are aiming for the mountains?” I asked.
“For Luggernel Alley,” he said.
I remembered how, in our very first interview, a thousand miles away at the Fulano mine, he had spoken of this spot. All the conversation then, all the talk about my horse, came back to me like a Delphic prophecy suddenly fulfilled. I made a good omen of this remembrance.
“For Luggernel Alley,” said Brent. “Do you recollect my pointing out a notch in the Sierra, yesterday, when I said I would like to spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a woman brave enough for this plains’ life?”
He grew very white as he spoke, and again Pumps led off by a neck, we ranging up instantly.
“They will make for the Luggernel Springs. The Alley is the only gate through the mountains towards the Arkansaw. If they can get by there, they are safe. They can strike off New Mexico way; or keep on to the States out of the line of emigration or any Mormon pursuit. The Springs are the only water to be had at this season, without digging, anywhere in that quarter. They must go there. We are no farther from the spot than we were at Bridger. We have been travelling along the base of the triangle. We have only lost time. And, now that we are fairly under way, I think we might shake out another reef. A little faster, friends,—a little faster yet!”
It was a vast desert level where we were riding. Here and there a scanty tuft of grass appeared, to prove that Nature had tried her benign experiment, and wafted seeds hither to let the scene be verdant, if it would. Nature had failed. The land refused any mantle over its brown desolation. The soil was disintegrated, igneous rock, fine and well beaten down as the most thoroughly laid Macadam.
Behind was the rolling region where the Great Trail passes; before and far away, the faint blue of the Sierra. Not a bird sang in the hot noon; not a cricket chirped. No sound except the beat of our horses’ hoofs on the pavement. We rode side by side, taking our strides together. It was a waiting race. The horses travelled easily. They learned, as a horse with a self-possessed rider will, that they were not to waste strength in rushes. “Spend, but waste not,”—not a step, not a breath, in that gallop for life! This must be our motto.
We three rode abreast over the sere brown plain on our gallop to save and to slay.