"Why, it's a flour sack over the horse's head!" she exclaimed. "They say a horse won't whinny if you cover his head. I wonder why Jack doesn't want him to whinny. And where is Jack?"
Two minutes later she found Jack. He was lying on his stomach in the brush behind an outcrop. The outcrop overlooked the trail. Jack's rifle was poked out in front of him. It was only too obvious that Jack was also overlooking the trail. Why?
A few minutes later that question was answered by the sudden appearance of a rider at a bend of the trail a mile back. Jack Murray must have glimpsed the rider at the same time, for Hazel saw him snuggle down like a hare in its form, and alter slightly the position of his rifle, although the rider was not yet within accurate shooting range. With a gasp she recognized the rider on the trail by his high-crowned white hat: only one man in Golden Bar wore such a hat and that man was Billy Wingo. Instantly she recalled what folks were saying of Jack Murray since it had become positively known that the party nomination for sheriff had gone to Billy Wingo, that Jack Murray "had it in" for Billy, that he had made threats more or less vague, and that he had taken to brooding over his fancied wrongs. She realized that the threats had crystallized into action, and that this was an ambush.
She knew that Billy would be masked by a certain belt of trees before he traveled another thirty yards, not to emerge into view again till he topped a rise of ground about a thousand yards from the base of the hill on which she stood. It was a certainty that Jack would not risk a shot till his enemy had crossed the rise of ground. If Hazel could only reach the top of the rise first—
Hazel popped up into the seat of the buckboard as Billy reached the belt of trees. It has been shown that Hazel Walton was a good driver, and she needed every atom of her skill to turn the buckboard in the narrow trail without smashing a wheel against the rocks that some apparently malign agency had seen fit to strew about at that particular spot. The near mule, devil that he was, when he found that he was no longer headed for home, stuck out his lower lip and front legs and balked.
This was unwise of the near mule. He should have chosen a more opportune moment. Hazel had no time to reason with him. She set her teeth, slacked the reins, opened her jack-knife and jabbed an inch and a half of the longer blade into the mule's swelling hip.
It is doubtful whether the recalcitrant mule ever moved faster in his life. The forward spring he gave as the steel perforated his thick hide almost snapped the doubletree. Hazel, her toes hooked under the iron foot-rail, poured the leather into the off mule.
She made no attempt to guide her galloping team. She did not need to. She barely felt their mouths, but ever she kept her whip going, and the mules laid their bellies to the ground and flew down that hill like frightened jack rabbits. And like a rubber ball the buckboard bounced behind them.
Hazel knew that Jack Murray behind his outcrop must hear the thunder of the racing hoofs, the rattle of the swooping buckboard. Half-way down the hill she lost her hat. Promptly every hairpin she possessed lost its grip and her hair came down. In a dark and rippling cloud it streamed behind her.
"Keep your feet, mules!" she gritted through her locked teeth. "Keep your feet, for God's sake!"