The ponies were now running at top speed, and as they shot over a rise their
riders saw their quarry a mile and a half in advance. One of the Indians looked back
and discharged his rifle in defiance, and it now became a race worthy
of the name-Death fled from Death. The fresher mounts of the cowboys
steadily cut down the distance and, as the rifles of the pursuers
began to speak, the hard-pressed Indians made for the smaller of two
knolls, the plain leading to the larger one being too heavily strewn
with bowlders to permit speed.
As the fugitives settled down behind the rocks which fringed the
edge of their elevation a shot from one of them disabled Billy's arm,
but had no other effect than to increase the score to be settled. The
pursuers rode behind a rise and dismounted, from where, leaving their
mounts protected, they scattered out to surround the knoll.
Hopalong, true to his curiosity, finally turned up on the highest
point of the other knoll, a spur of the range in the west, for he
always wanted to see all he could. Skinny, due to his fighting
instinct, settled one hundred yards to the north and on the same spur.
Buck lay hidden behind an enormous bowlder eight hundred yards to the
northeast of Skinny, and the same distance southeast of Buck was Red
Connors, who was crawling up the bed of an arroyo. Billy, nursing his
arm, lay in front of the horses, and Pete, from his position between
Billy and Hopalong, was crawling from rock to rock in an endeavor to
get near enough to use his Colts, his favorite and most effective
weapons.
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