e raider had disappeared, he slashed
her cruelly with his spurs. In a moment the noise of the battle was
left behind him, and the mare, with cat-like leaps, was breasting the
ascent.

And Tresler only thought of the man he was in pursuit of. His own
neck or the neck of his mare mattered nothing to him then. Through
him, or through the mare, they had lost Red Mask. He must rectify
the fault. He had no idea how. His brain was capable of only one
thought--pursuit; and he thanked his stars for the sure-footed beast
under him. Nothing stopped her; she lifted to every obstruction. A
cut-bank had no terrors for her, she simply charged it with her great,
strong hoofs till the gravel and sand poured away under them and left
her a foothold. Bushes were trampled down or plunged through. Blindly
she raced for the top, at an angle that made her rider cling to the
horn of his saddle to keep himself from sliding off over the cantle.

They passed Fyles struggling laboriously to reach the top. The Lady
Jezebel seemed to shoot past him and leave him standing. And as he
went Tresler called out--

"How much start has he?"

"He's topping it now," the sheriff replied.

And the answer fired Tresler's excitement so that he again rammed both
spurs into the mare's flanks. The top of the hill loomed up against
the sky. A thick fringe of bush confronted them. Head down, nose
almost touching the ground, the mad animal plunged into it. Her rider
barely had time to lie down in his saddle and cling to her neck. His
thoughts were in a sort of mental whirlpool and he hardly realized
what had happened, when, the next moment, the frenzied demon under him
plunged out on to the open prairie.

She made no pause or hesitation, but like a shot from a gun swept on
straight as the crow flies, her nose alone guiding her. She still held
the bit in her jaws; her frolic had only just begun. Tresler looked
ahead and scanned the sky-line, but the darkness obscured all signs
of his quarry.

He had just made up his mind to trust to chance and the captious mood
of his mare when the moon, crossing a rift in the clouds, gave him a
sort of flashlight view of the horizon. It only lasted a few seconds,
but it lasted long enough for him to detect a horseman heading for the
Mosquito River, away to the right, with a start that looked like
something over a mile. His heart sank at the prospect. But the next
instant hope bounded within him, for the mare swung round of her