the speediest team
in the country, and he had only three miles to go. They----

"Hold up, you beast," he cried, his deep voice hoarse with excitement.

One of the horses lunged forward, stumbling in a badger hole. The
buckboard jolted terrifically. The driver was nearly thrown from his
seat. Under his firm hands, however, the beast managed to recover
itself. Then, as though he saw the gates of the penitentiary closing
upon him, a feeling of unutterable horror shivered through the man's
body and settled upon his heart. The horse was dead lame.

But there was no time now for feeling, no time for regrets. The
pursuers had found his trail, and were hard upon his heels. The cargo
must go. Everything must go. Personal safety was the only thing to be
considered. From the confidence of victory now he had fallen to the
zero of certain failure.

He pulled his sweating team up and sprang to the ground. He ran up to
the saddle horse, and, casting the neck-rope loose from the neck yoke,
looped it over the horn of the saddle. The next moment he was in the
saddle and racing over the grassland in the direction of the village.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE NIGHT TRAIL

The trail declined over a long, gradual slope. At the bottom of it
was a broad, almost dried-out slough. A wooden culvert spanned the
reed-grown watercourse. Then the trail made a sharpish ascent beyond,
and lost itself behind a distant bush, beyond which again stretched
out a broad expanse of grass.

Two horsemen were speeding down the longer slope. Their horses were
fresh and full of speed. There was no speech passing between them.
Eyes and ears were alert, and their grimly set faces gave warning of
the anxious thought teeming through their brains.

The indications of the night were nothing to them. The trail might
ring with the beat of their horses' hoofs, or only reply with the soft
thud of a deep, sandy surface. They were not out to consider either
their horses or themselves. Each knew that his journey was one of
desperate emergency, and one of them, at least, cared nothing what
might be his sacrifice, even if it were life itself.

The horses came down the hill with a headlong rush. Loose reins told
of the men's feelings, and the creatures, themselves, as though imbued
with something of their riders' spirits, abandoned themselves to the
race with equal recklessness.

Halfway down the hill the foremost of the two, the smaller and
slighter, abruptly flung