been
shortened. It seemed to Corrigan that he had never seen a horse that
traveled as smoothly and evenly as the big black, or that ran with as
little effort. He began to loathe the black with an intensity equaled only
by that which he felt for his rider.

He held his lead for another mile. Glancing back a little later he noted
with a quickening pulse that the distance had been shortened by several
hundred feet, and that the black seemed to be traveling with as little
effort as ever. Also, for the first time, Corrigan noticed the presence of
other riders, behind Trevison. They were topping a slight rise at the
instant he glanced back, and were at least a mile behind his pursuer.

At first, mingled with his fear, Corrigan had felt a slight disgust for
himself in yielding to his sudden panic. He had never been in the habit of
running. He had been as proud of his courage as he had been of his
cleverness and his keenness in planning and plotting. It had been his
mental boast that in every crisis his nerve was coldest. But now he nursed
a vagrant, furtive hope that waiting for him at Manti would be some of
those men whom he had hired at his own expense to impersonate deputies.
The presence of the hope was as inexplicable as the fear that had set him
to running from Trevison. Two or three weeks ago he would have faced both
Trevison and his men and brazened it out. But of late a growing dread of
the man had seized him. Never before had he met a man who refused to be
beaten, or who had fought him as recklessly and relentlessly.

He jeered at himself as he rode, telling himself that when Trevison got
near enough he would stand and have it out with him--for he knew that the
fight had narrowed down between them until it was as Trevison had said,
man to man--but as he rode his breath came faster, his backward glances
grew more frequent and fearful, and the cold sweat on his forehead grew
clammy. Fear, naked and shameful, had seized him.

* * * * *

Behind him, lean, gaunt, haggard; seeing nothing but the big man ahead of
him, feeling nothing but an insane desire to maim or slay him, rode a man
who in forty-eight hours had been transformed from a frank, guileless,
plain-speaking human, to a rage-drunken savage--a monomaniac who, as he
leaned over Nigger's mane, whispered and whined and mewed, as his
forebears, in some tropical jungle, voiced their passions when they set
forth to slay th