The stallion ceased pretense of galloping. Now and then he even dropped from his uncertain trotting to a walk.

VB, watching behind, could just make out those other travelers in the light of the low-hanging moon which seemed to balance on the ragged horizon and linger for sight of the finish of this grim drama worked out in the lonely stretches. As the horse stumbled more and more frequently under him VB knew that those who pressed him were coming closer. Then a flash of flame and a bullet spattered itself against a rock ahead and to the right.

"They're closer, Captain!" he muttered grimly. "The game's going against us--against you. I'm too much of a burden--too much weight."

His mind seized upon the aimless words. The suddenness of his shifting in the saddle made the stallion stagger, for VB's whole weight went into the right stirrup. He drew the other up with fiendish tinges shooting through his breast and tore at the cinch. It came loose. The saddle turned. VB flung his arms about the Captain's neck and kicked it from under him.

"Fifty pounds gone!" he muttered triumphantly, and the horse tossed his head, quickening the trot, trying once again the heavy gallop.

VB could hear the horse breathing through his mouth. He looked down and saw that the long tongue flopped from the lips with every movement of the fine head. Tears came to his eyes as he caressed the Captain's withers frantically.

"Can I do more, boy?" he asked in a strained voice. "Can I do more?"

It was as though he pleaded with a dying human.

"Yes, I can do more!" he cried a moment later in answer to his own question. "You've given your whole to me; now I'll give you back your freedom, make you as free as you were the day I took you. I'll strip you, boy!"

He reached far out along the neck, drawing his weight up on the withers, and loosed the head-stall. The bridle fell into the road and the Captain ran naked! And, as though to show his grat.i.tude, the horse shook his head groggily and reeled on in his crazy progress.

A half mile farther on the Captain fell. VB went down heavily and mounted the waiting horse again in a daze--from which he was roused by the fresh gushing on his breast. Another shot from behind--then two close together.

Dawn was coming. He looked around vaguely. The moon was slipping away.

Perhaps yet it would be in at the finish. The shimmering light of new day was taking from objects their ghostly quality; making them real.

The men behind could see VB--and they were firing!

The boy said no word to the Captain. He merely clamped his knees tighter and leaned lower on his neck. He had ceased to think, ceased to struggle. His trust, his life, was in the shaking legs of the animal he rode, whose sweat soaked through his clothing to mingle with the blood there.

The stallion breathed in great moaning sobs, as though his heart were bursting, as though his lungs were raw and bleeding. He reeled from side to side crazily. Now and then he ran out of the road and floundered blindly back. His head hung low, almost to his knees, and swung from side to side with each step, and at intervals he raised it as though it were a great weight, to gasp--and to sob!

From behind, bullets. Rhues and Matson fired grimly. They had ceased to lash their ponies, for it was useless. The beasts were beyond giving better service in return for punishment. Their sides dripped blood, but they were beyond suffering. Handicapped as he had been, the Captain had held them off, almost stride for stride.

Better light now, but their shooting could not hope to find a mark except through chance. They cursed in glad snarls as they saw the stallion reel, sink to his knees; then snarled again as they saw him recover and go on at his drunken trot.

Before VB's eyes floated a blotch of color. It was golden, a diffused light that comforted him; that, for some incomprehensible reason, was soothing to the senses. It eased the wound, too, and put new strength in his heart so that he could feel the warm blood seeping slowly into his numb arms and hands and fingers. He smiled foolishly and hugged the Captain's neck as the horse reeled along. Oh, it was a glorious color!

He remembered the day he had seen a little patch of it scudding along the roadway in the sunshine. Why, it had seemed like concentrated sunshine itself.

"Gail," he murmured. "It was you--I didn't want to put--that mark--on you!"

The nature of that color became clear to him and he roused himself. It was a light--a light in a window--the window of a ranch house--d.i.c.k Worth's ranch house!

Bullets had ceased to zip and sing and spatter. He did not turn to see what had become of his pursuers, for he was capable of only one thought at a time.

"d.i.c.k Worth! d.i.c.k Worth!" he screamed.

Then he looked behind. Away to the left he saw two riders pushing through the dawn, detouring. And he laughed, almost gayly.

Another blotch of light, a bigger one, showed in the young day. It was an opened door, and a deep chest gave forth an answer to his cry. d.i.c.k Worth stepped from the threshold of his home and ran to the gate to see better this crazy figure which lurched toward him. It was a man on foot, hatless, his face gray like the sky above, hair tousled, eyes glowing red. He stumbled to the fence and leaned there for support, holding something forward, something limp and bloodstained.

"d.i.c.k--it's Kelly's money belt--Rhues--he killed him-- He shot me--he's got the money--on him--he's swinging off west--two of 'em-- Their horses are--all in-- He--he shot Kelly because--I wouldn't take--a drink--he--and I need--a--drink--"

He slumped down against the fence.

After an uncertain age VB swam back from that mental vacuity to reality. He saw, first, that the Captain was beside him, standing there breathing loudly, eyes closed, sobbing low at every heave of his lungs.

A quavering moan made its way to the boy's throat and he moved over, reaching out groping arms for the stallion's lowered head.

"Captain!" he moaned. "Oh, boy--it was our last ride--I can never--ask you to carry me--again."

He hugged the face closer to his.

Then he heard a man's voice saying:

"Here, VB, take this--it'll brace you up!"

He turned his face slowly, for the strength that remained was far from certain. His wound was on fire, every nerve of his body laid bare. His will to do began and ended with wanting to hold that horse's head close. He was as a child, stripped of every effect that the experiences of his life could have had. He was weak, broken, unwittingly searching for a way back to strength.

He turned his head halfway and beheld the man stooping beside him who held in his hands a bottle, uncorked, and from it came a strong odor.

The boy dilated his nostrils and drew great breaths laden with the fumes of the stuff. A new life came into his eyes. They shone, they sparkled. Activity came to those bare nerves, and they raised their demands.

He opened his mouth and let the odor he inhaled play across that place in his throat. The smell went on out through his arteries, through his veins, along the nerves to the ends of his being, to the core of his soul! He was down, down in the depths, his very ego crying for the stimulant, for something to help it come back.

He coaxed along that yearning, let it rise to its fullest. Then he raised his eyes to meet the concerned gaze of the other man. And the man saw in those eyes a look that made him sway back, that made him open his lips in surprise.

"To h.e.l.l with that stuff!" the boy screamed. "To h.e.l.l with it! To h.e.l.l--_to h.e.l.l!_ It belongs there! It--it killed the Captain!"

Tears came with the sobs, and strength to the arms that held the stallion's head; strength that surged through his entire body, stilling those nerves, throttling the crying of his throat. For VB had gone down to his test, his real ordeal, and had found himself not wanting.

CHAPTER XXV

"The Light!"

Jed Avery sat alone. It was night, a moonlight night in Colorado, the whole world bathed in a cold radiance that conduces to dreams and fantasies.

But as he sat alone Jed's mind wove no light reveries. Far from it, indeed. He was sodden in spirit, weakened in nerve.

He rested his body on the edge of a chair seat and leaned far forward, elbows on his knees. His fingers twined continually, and on occasion one fist hammered the palm of the other hand.

"You old fool!" he whispered. "You old fool! Now, if he's gone--"

For twenty-four hours he had not dared frame the words.

He lifted his eyes to the window, and against the moonlight stood a bottle, its outlines distorted by incrustings of tallow. No candle was in its neck. There was only the bottle.