Evidently the Mexican was about to fasten the mare. Once tied, there was less chance for her to break clear, than from the Mexican’s hand. Only a second or two to think in; in fact, Elbert didn’t think it out. His fingers reached for the handle of the sheath-knife, bringing the whistle to his lips. Its shrill scream cut forth. Mamie’s head lifted and yanked back, but the Mexican did not lose his grip upon the rein. Running forward Elbert whistled again; then stretched his lungs in a yell, as strange and startling to himself as to the sleepy Sonora hills.
The knife in his hand was not to kill; he had merely not put it back in its sheath. The two men by the fire were on their feet; the third stubbornly trying to gain the saddle, but Mamie slid from under, and kept pulling away. Then an instant of utter amazement—the face of Mamie’s tormentor near enough to be recognized—one of Bart’s bandits whom he had raced away from the night before.
Elbert changed the quality of his shouting, but the Mexican had let go the bridle-rein, and was speeding after his two companions, who had vanished from the circle of firelight. They were at their horses—mounting and spurring away. Elbert rubbed his dazed eyes—they were gone—Mamie trotting toward him, head extra high to keep from tripping on her bridle-reins.
The whistle had done it—and his shouts, which must have sounded like a platoon closing in, to the leaderless bandit party. The whistle for Mamie, the yell—Elbert did not know how he had come to vent that, unless for his own courage.
Never before had he felt such a sense of belonging anywhere, as when he folded over the Pitcairn stock-saddle. Sitting straight did not suffice; he seemed fallen to clinging to the neck of his mare. Even a minute later, he would have forgotten Bart’s sorrel, tied securely in the bristling live-oak scrub, had not Mamie flirted her signal as she galloped by on the moon-drenched hill.
‘They sure thought I was the rurales,’ he laughed.
At this juncture he missed his saddle-bags.
‘I suppose Bart would go back and get them right now,’ he thought. ‘Not for me. Nothing in them I can’t do without. What silver there is—those three fellows I ditched last night—may need that!’
His eyes were craning about the sky to locate the north star.
‘I won’t have to tell Bart how I lost Mamie, nor about the other three,’ he communed later. ‘Now that I’ve got her back, I won’t have to speak of it at all.’