d if the men of Caswell failed
in their duty it meant safety for the fugitive, because two miles beyond
were the willows of the marshes and the fords across the Asper River.
There could only be two alternatives, since not a man showed on the
hills. Either they waited in ambush, or else they had mistaken the route
along which Barry would come, and the latter was hardly possible. With
his glasses Mark Retherton scanned the hills anxiously and it was then
that he saw the dark form of the wolf-dog skulking on before the
outlaw. He had watched Black Bart before this, of course, but never with
suspicion until he noted the peculiar manner in which the animal skirted
here and there through the rough ground, pausing on high places, weaving
back and forth across the course of his master.

"Like a scout," thought Retherton. "And by God, there he comes to
report!"

For Black Bart had whirled and raced straight back for Dan. There was no
need of howl or whine to give the reason of his coming; the speed of his
running meant business, and Barry shortened the pace of Satan while he
looked over the hills, incredulous, despairing.

It could not be that men lurked there to cut him off. No living thing
could have raced from Rickett to Caswell City to warn them of his
coming. Nevertheless, there came Bart with the ill tidings, and it only
remained to skirt swiftly east, round the dangerous ground, and strike
the marshes first. He swung Satan around on the new course with a
pressure of his knees and loosed him into a freer gallop.

They must have sensed the meaning of this maneuver at once, for hardly
had he stretched out east when voices shouted out of the hills, and
around and over several low knolls came forty horsemen, racing. Half a
dozen were already due east--no escape that way; and the long line of
the others came straight at him with the slope of the ground to give
them velocity.

Chapter XXXIV. The Warning

All in a grim instant he saw the trap. It closed upon his consciousness
with a click, and as he doubled Satan around he knew that the only
escape was in running southeast along the banks of the Asper. Even that
was a desperate, a forlorn chance, for if that omnipotent voice could
reach from Rickett to Caswell City, fifty miles away, certainly it must
have warned the river towns of Ganton and Wilsonville and Bly Falls
where Tucker Creek ran into the Asper. But this was no time for
thinking. Already, looking back, he sa