were already a ghost. He waved his hand defiantly at them and the
mare, at a word from him, sprang into a long-striding gallop that
whirled them rapidly down the street and out of the village.

The bay mare carried him with amazing speed over the ground. They
rounded the base of the big mountain, and, glancing up at the ragged
canyons which chopped the face of the peak, he was glad that he had
not attempted that short cut. If Ronicky Doone could make that trail
he was a skillful horseman.

Bill Gregg swung up over the left shoulder of the mountain and found
himself looking down on the wide plain which held Stillwater. The air
was crystal-clear and dry; the shoulder of the mountain was high above
it; Gregg saw a breathless stretch of the cattle country at one sweep
of his eyes.

Stillwater was still a long way off, and far away across the plain he
saw a tiny moving dot that grew slowly. It was the train heading for
Stillwater, and that train he must beat to the station. For a moment
his heart stood still; then he saw that the train was distant indeed,
and, by the slightest use of the mare's speed, he would be able to
reach the town, two or three minutes ahead of it.

But, just as he was beginning to exult in the victory, after all the
hard riding of the past three days, the mare tossed up her head and
shortened her stride. The heart of Gregg stopped, and he went cold. It
was not only the fear that his journey might be ruined, but the fear
that something had happened to this magnificent creature beneath him.
He swung to the side in the saddle and watched her gallop. Certain she
went laboring, very much as though she were trying to run against a
mighty pull on the reins.

He looked at her head. It was thrown high, with pricking ears. Perhaps
she was frightened by some foolish thing near the road. He touched her
with the spurs, and she increased her pace to the old length and
ease of stride; but, just as he had begun to be reassured, her step
shortened and fell to laboring again, and this time she threw her head
higher than before. It was amazing to Bill Gregg; and then it seemed
to him that he heard a faint, far whistling, floating down from high
above his head.

Again that thin, long-drawn sound, and this time, glancing over his
right shoulder, he saw a horseman plunging down the slope of the
mountain. He knew instantly that it was Ronicky Doone. The man had
come to recapture his horse and had taken the short cut a