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This remark increased my anxiety, and made me more eager than ever to be off. I was looking out for Dio, and was inquiring for him, when he appeared mounted on a little mustang, with a brace of pistols in his belt, a soldier's carbine slung over his back, and a sword by his side. "Dey no want me to go," he said, "but I say I fight as well as dey."
Besides this, both he and Mickey were provided each with the fleetest and most intelligent mustang that money could purchase, and when mounted and with a fair field before them, they had little to fear from the pursuit of the Apaches and Comanches.
"Thar ye are, Dan!" Dan looked in the direction, and in a patch of cottonwoods made out a white object, moving slowly along. It was the mustang they were after, so tired out that he could scarcely move from one spot to the next. "We've got him now!" ejaculated the youth, enthusiastically. "And just as I was ready to give up, too! Come on!"
"Throw!" cried Dan, and the lasso left Ralph's hand with a whizzing sound. A few seconds later Dan made his own cast. As luck would have it, both landed over the mustang's head, but while Dan's was drawn tight with great quickness, Ralph's remained loose, so that in a twinkle the mustang shook it off, and then of course the line tightened around Dan's lariat instead.
While thus engaged, the mustang tugged at the rope, as if wishing to free himself. He must have felt that he was controlled by a strange hand, but his efforts were easily restrained. As nearly as Avon could judge, he had travelled more than two miles since leaving the cabin, so that, provided he had followed the proper course, he must have passed half the distance.
If he had asked for some one to go out and steal a mule, or kill a bear, or gallop a buck-jumping mustang to 'Frisco, they would have fought for the chance; but praying praying was entirely out of their line. The silence became painful: soon slouched hats were hauled down over moist eyes, and shirt-sleeves and bare arms seemed to find something unusual to attend to in the boys' faces.
Perhaps they would not have made it, for now through exhaustion the ears of the mustang were drooping back. He shouted, and at the faint sound of his cheer the piebald pricked a single weary ear. He shouted again, and this time not for encouragement, but from exultation; a swerving current had caught them and was bearing them swiftly toward the desired bank.
When he had eaten, he broke into breezy conversation, and especially of a vicious mustang he had ridden on a bet the day before. "Speakin' of hosses, Buck," said his father, "they's a black out in the shed right now that'd make your eyes jest nacherally pop out'n their sockets. No more'n fifteen hands, but a reg'lar picture. Must be greased lightnin'."
Just as the heart of the young hunter swelled with a wild desire to bring down the noble game, the mustang bounded away in pursuit of the very buffalo which had been indicated by the trapper.
Despite his alarming experience he had not lost his reckoning, and, facing toward the bed-ground of the herd, he had ridden but a short way, when the familiar sounds told him he was near the animals from which he was lost only a short time before. "They are here, Baby, just as I thought." The remark was made by Gleeson, who loomed up in the gloom as he spoke, with his mustang on a deliberate walk.
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