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The two women ran forward a pace or two, until their gaze commanded the whole stretch of the upper slope. 'Bias, stolidly impelling his team a roan and a rusty-black had, in the difficult process of steering the turn, been too closely occupied to let his gaze travel aside.
Grant looked quickly ahead; Phemie's roan, excited by the shouts behind her and to all appearance ungovernable, was fast disappearing with her rider. Without a word, trusting to his own good horsemanship and better knowledge of the ground, he darted out of the cavalcade to overtake her.
Just in front of the travellers a horseman was urging his steed up the slope, driving it on with whip and spur as one who rides for a set purpose. As he clattered up, Alleyne could see that the roan horse was gray with dust and flecked with foam, as though it had left many a mile behind it.
It was like sitting in grandma's pet rocking chair when that roan loosened his muscles for a long, tireless gallop over the prairie sod, and as a stayer Andy had never seen his equal. It was not his turn to choose, however, and he held his breath lest the rope of another should settle over the slatey-black ears ahead of him.
A few yards farther the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the prickly openings. Then he dismounted, dropped the roan's reins, and proceeded on foot, stooping and silent, like an Indian. The roan, knowing his part, stood still, making no sound. The Kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pear thicket and reconnoitred between the leaves of a clump of cactus.
And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath two riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and he on the right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie. His first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning of this portent, tell the fellow to 'bunk, and take Holly home.
Somewhere in the hills there had been a waterspout. She called upon her pony with spur and voice, racing desperately for the place where the trail rose. Of that wild dash for life she remembered nothing afterward save the overmastering sense of peril. She knew that the roan was pounding forward with the best speed in him, and presently she knew too that no speed could save her.
There is a fleeter horse in the stable than my mare; 'tis the roan filly in the second stall." "God bless you!" He was gone. She waited to hear the clatter of his horse's hoofs in the roadway. When Caesar came in a few moments later, to tell the news of Capt. Brewster's escape, the room was empty; but it was soon filled again by a dozen turbulent troopers.
I will be home to-morrow afternoon. Meet me at the station with the roan mare, if she ain't too tired to draw the buggy. "Your affectionate father, "Josiah A. Jones." When Ben Mayberry had explained how much could be saved by crossing out the superfluous words in this message, while its main points would be left, the farmer's anger turned to pleasure.
For an hour Bud Billings had stood by the little gate looking down the big stretch of sandy road, expecting to see the familiar shuffling, blind old roan coming: "Sum'pins happened to Ben Butler," said Bud at last and at thought of such a calamity, he sat down and shed tears. His simple heart yearned for pity, and feeling something purring against him he picked up the cat and coddled it.
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