There, between her and the Holding, far distant, there were two riders––and they rode bay horses, both!
She made no doubt that they were Wylackie Bob and Black Bart, on Arrow and Slingshot.
A sudden mist of fear came across her eyes. A tightening caught her throat. She looked around the illimitable spaces that stretched away on all sides. There was nothing in all the spreading plains but the three riders, sprung from nowhere, it seemed, and herself.
Courtrey came rapidly up toward her, swinging a bit to the west. The others, set somewhat apart to right and left, bore down upon her. It looked 134 very much as if they meant to ride her down to the Black Coulee.
Once in its sheltering deep wash she would be helpless, cut off from escape. The Black Coulee went back into the eastern hills, lost itself up in the rugged and torturous clefts and chasms that cut the unknown ramparts, dark with forest and mysterious.
No! Not the Black Coulee and Courtrey to take her prisoner!
She looked this way and that. Then she saw that toward her right she had some margin. There was space there to swing away from the man in front who came like the wind itself toward her. She caught the seeming of great speed and her heart leaped again.
She recalled the day she had asked Jack Masters if Bolt could run like El Rey.
“How do I know?” he had answered. “I know it was speed, an’ that is all.” True enough. It was Bolt, coming like his namesake, down along the sloping stretches.
But a great wave of exultation swept over her. She rose in her stirrups, shook an insulting hand above her, dropped on El Rey’s neck, swerved him east and swept away toward the lifting skirts of the wooded hills. She heard a yell behind her, glanced back and saw that the three Ironwoods 135 were sweeping behind her, closing in together. It was to be a race at last!