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He made no answer to their questions as to what he was trying to do. All at once off in the cloud they heard rapid hoofbeats. The boys glanced at each other in surprise. "It's the ponies returning," breathed Walter Perkins. Ned shook his head. The cries now took on a more insistent tone, and a moment later two ponies came whinnying into the camp, snorting with fear.
"Sir," said he, with a snap of the gloved left hand at the brown tube nestling in the hollow of the shoulder, "Number Five reports that he has heard galloping hoofbeats up the bench twice in the last half hour, and thought he saw distant horsemen, three; couldn't say whether they were Indians or cowboys." "Very good, sergeant," was the major's brief answer.
Through the light skipped a man and a girl, so little aware of him that they stopped, laughingly, wrestling for an umbrella, then disappeared, and the street was like a forgotten tomb. A hansom swung by, the hoofbeats sharp and cheerless. The rain dripped. Nothing else. Mr. Wrenn slammed down the window.
Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard the lively hoofbeats of Fritz's team of little black mules, and very soon afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz's big spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice shouted a greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger's.
His pistol dropped from his weakening fingers, he toppled sidewise and tumbled limply into the dust. Shortly afterward, seemingly while he was in a state of coma, he heard hoofbeats, rapidly growing distant. He knew they were Deveny's men and he yielded to a vague wonder as to why they had not made sure of their work.
For many minutes they remained thus, but starting at each sound from without, and hearing in every rustle of the leafless trees and shrubbery the hoofbeats of horses bearing their pursuing enemies.
The last he heard of them was Mary Traill's childlike voice calling back on a quavering note "I shall never forget what you did, Mr. Blood. I shall never forget." But as it was not the voice he desired to hear, the assurance brought him little satisfaction. He stood there in the dark watching the fireflies amid the rhododendrons, till the hoofbeats had faded. Then he sighed and roused himself.
Taggart's coming was attended with interest by Malcolm, who, hearing hoofbeats in the ranchhouse yard came to the door of the bunkhouse where he had been doing some small task; by Bob, who hobbled out of the stable door, his eyes wide; and by Betty, who, forewarned of the visit by Dade, had come out upon the porch and had been watching his approach.
The bear, too, danced, as if obsessed by some infernal music; and the skipping, and leaping, and dodging, and waltzing of these two would have been ludicrous had it not been a matter of life and horrid death. Through it all Roldan was vaguely conscious of approaching hoofbeats, but there was no room in his consciousness for hope or despair.
Jane and the faithful Mac had just left indeed, the sound of her horse's hoofbeats might still be heard through the pulseless evening as the two men gazed in moody silence at the approaching night. The sky had taken on that deep blue velvet softness of Italian beauty, and the low, red west of the dying day might have been reflected from some funeral pyre in distant, mystic India.
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