Vic himself could not have selected five cooler
fighters among the villagers or five finer mounts. The posse switched
around the end of the street and darted up the hill like the curling
lash of a whip.

"Good," said Vic Gregg. "The damn fools will wind their horses before
they hit the pass."

He put Grey Molly into an easy trot, for the floor of the pass dipped
up and down, littered with sharp-toothed rocks or treacherous, rolling
ones, as bad a place for speed as a stiff upslope. According to his
nicest calculation the posse could not reach the edge of the gulch
before he was at the farther side, out of range of everything except a
long chance shot, so he took note of things as he went and observed a
spot of pale silver skirting through the brush on the eastern ridge of
the gorge. There would be moonlight that night and another chance
in favor of Pete Glass. He remembered then, with quiet content, that
jogging in the holster was a power which with six words might stop those
six pursuers.

A long halloo came barking down the pass, now drawling out, now cut away
to silence as the angling cliffs sent on the echo, and Vic loosened the
rein. Grey Molly swung out with a snort of relief to a free-swinging
gallop and they swept down a great, gentle slope where new grass padded
the fall of her hoofs, yet even then he kept the mare checked and held
her in touch with an easily playing wrist. He did not imagine that even
the sheriff on the dusty roan would dream of trying to swallow up Grey
Molly in a short sprint but that assurance nearly cost Vic his life. The
roar of hoofs in the gulch belched out into the comparative silence
of the open space beyond and just as he gave the mare her head a gun
coughed and an angry humming darted past his ear.

Molly lengthened into full speed. He could not tell on account of the
muffling grass whether the pursuit was gaining or losing. He trusted
blindly to the mare and when he looked back they were already pulling
their mounts down to a hand gallop. That would teach them to match Molly
in a sprint, roan or no roan!

He slapped her below the withers, where the long, hard muscles rippled
back and forth. She was full of running, her gallop as light as the
toss of a bough in the wind, and now as he pulled her back to a swinging
canter her head went high, with pricking ears. Suddenly his heart went
out to her; she would run like that till she died, he knew.

"Good girl," he whispered huskil