Get-'Em."

Billie, his face twisted with pain, watched the youngster disappear at a
breakneck gallop into Escondido.

Chapter III

Ranse Roush Pays

Jim Thursday knew that his sole chance of success lay in reaching the
fork of the canons before the Indians. So far he had been lucky. Three
Apaches had gone to their happy hunting ground, and though both he and
Billie were wounded, his hurt at least did not interfere with accurate
rifle-fire. But it was not reasonable to expect such good fortune to
hold. In the party he was pursuing were four men, all of them used to
warfare in the open. Unless he could take them at a disadvantage he could
not by any possibility defeat them and rescue their captive.

His cinnamon pony took the rising ground at a steady gallop. Its stride
did not falter, though its breathing was labored. Occasionally the rider
touched its flank with the sharp rowel of a spur. The boy was a lover of
horses. He had ridden too many dry desert stretches, had too often kept
night watch over a sleeping herd, not to care for the faithful and
efficient animal that served him and was a companion to his loneliness.
Like many plainsmen he made of his mount a friend.

But he dared not spare his pony now. He must ride the heart out of the
gallant brute for the sake of that life he had come to save. And while he
urged it on, his hand patted the sweat-stained neck and his low voice
sympathized.

"You've got to go to it, old fellow, if it kills you," he said aloud. "We
got to save that girl for Billie, ain't we? We can't let those red devils
take her away, can we?"

It was a rough cattle trail he followed, strewn here with boulders and
there tilted down at breakneck angle of slippery shale. Sometimes it fell
abruptly into washes and more than once rose so sharply that a heather
cat could scarce have clambered up. But Thursday flung his horse
recklessly at the path, taking chances of a fall that might end the mad
race. He could not wait to pick a way. His one hope lay in speed, in
reaching the fork before the enemy. He sacrificed everything to that.

From the top of a sharp pitch he looked down into the twin canon of
Escondido. A sharp bend cut off the view to the left, so that he could
see for only seventy-five or a hundred yards. But his glance followed the
gulch up for half a mile and found no sign of life. He was in time.

Swiftly he made his preparations. First he led the exhausted horse back
to a c