In another half-hour he had passed Cold Canon, and twenty minutes after
that had begun the descent into Indian River. He forded the river at a
gallop, and, with the water dripping from his very hat-brim, drove
labouring under the farther slope.
Then he drew rein with a cry of bewilderment and apprehension. The
lights of Iowa Hill were not two hundred yards distant. He had covered
the whole distance from the mine, and where was Chino?
There was but one answer: back there along the trail somewhere, at some
point by which Lockwood had galloped headlong and unheeding, lying up
there in the chaparral with Reno's bullets in his body.
There was no time now to go on to the Hill. Chino, if he was not past
help, needed it without an instant's loss of time. Lockwood spun the
horse about. Once more the ford, once more the canon slopes, once more
the sharp turn by Cold Canon, once more the thick darkness under the
redwoods. Steadily he galloped on, searching the roadside.
Then all at once he reined in sharply, bringing the horse to a
standstill, one ear turned down the wind. The night's silence was broken
by a multitude of sounds--the laboured breathing of the spent bronco,
the saddle creaking as the dripping flanks rose and fell, the touch of
wind in the tree-tops and the chorusing of the myriad tree-toads. But
through all these, distinct, as precise as a clock-tick, Lockwood had
heard, and yet distinguished, the click of a horse's hoof drawing near,
and the horse was at a gallop: Reno at last.
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