[XXIII]
Tesno seized one of the saddle horses in front of the building and swung across town at a canter. He got no glimpse of Madrid till he was through the woods and at the edge of Vickers' camp; then he saw him far ahead on the wide, slow-climbing road that led to Runaway Mountain and the tunnel. Madrid looked back, urged his horse ahead a bit faster, and jogged out of sight around a bend.
Tesno reined into the empty camp and rode through it at a gallop. By taking the steep mule trail up the side of the gulch, he would avoid the possibility of being ambushed at that bend. If Madrid waited there, Tesno could cut him off. If not, he would at least close up some of the distance and have a chance of overtaking him before he reached the timber on the mountain top.
He found the horse willing and sure-footed on the narrow, twisting trail, and he gave the animal its head. The climb took longer than he had expected. But when at last the horse strained up the final steep ascent onto graded roadbed, Madrid was a scant hundred yards ahead. Tesno yelled at him to halt, drew his revolver, fired a wild shot.
Madrid continued at a trot. He rode straight to the gaping black arch of the tunnel, then veered to the left into the road that began its climb to the summit here. Tesno prodded his horse forward at an easy lope. He reached the road with Madrid directly above him, hardly within effective revolver range. Madrid wheeled his horse around, whipping a Winchester from its boot. He quickly aimed and fired.
Tesno's horse dropped in its tracks, making a sort of uncompleted somersault, pitching him forward out of the saddle. He landed painfully on a shoulder, rolled to his feet. His revolver was gone; he combed the ground with his eyes, didn't see it. A bullet drove past his head close enough so he could hear its angry buzz. Madrid was plunging down the road toward him, firing the rifle as he came. There was nothing to do but run, no place to run but into the tunnel. Another bullet tore splinters from a shoring timber at the portal as Tesno darted inside.
The tunnel was deserted, the crew in town. The arc lights that usually lighted the shaft had been turned off. A lantern glowed just within the portal; Tesno stooped and turned it out. He ran on into the darkness. He looked back to see Madrid framed in the arch of the portal, getting down from his horse, stooping to pick up something. My gun, Tesno thought.
Madrid raised his rifle then and fired blindly, whimsically, into the tunnel. Tesno leaped to the left wall and threw himself headlong. Madrid rapidly emptied the Winchester and threw it aside. Tesno hurried on. The dead end of the tunnel in the middle of a mountain was a hell of a place to die, he thought. He was aware now of a light somewhere ahead, too dim and distant to silhouette him. It must be back a way on the bench, he thought. If he could get up there, find a weapon, that would be the place to make a stand.
He looked back again. Madrid had found a lantern and lighted it. He held it above his head as he walked forward. His revolver gleamed in his other hand.
A minute later, Tesno reached the bench. This rose fourteen feet above the floor of the tunnel. Above it, the eight-foot shaft of the heading extended another forty or fifty feet into the mountain. The timbers resting on the bench had to be replaced as it was removed; so it was cut away in slices and presented a vertical face. A ladder stood against this. Tesno scaled it and drew it up after him.