The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above the steady plunging
of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of
other hoofs in the darkness before them.

"It's that horse thief!" said Dunn, in a savage whisper. "Bear to the
right, and hand me the whip."

A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at
each stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from
side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by
one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. "Sing
out to him to pull up, or we'll fire. My voice is clean gone," he added,
in a husky whisper.

They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a vehicle
careering from side to side in the blackness ahead. Dunn deliberately
raised his weapon. "Sing out!" he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who
was still keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion's arm.

"Hush! It's NOT Buckskin," he whispered hurriedly.

"Are you sure?"

"DON'T YOU SEE WE'RE GAINING ON HIM?" replied the other contemptuously.
Dunn grasped his companion's hand and pressed it silently. Even in
that supreme moment this horseman's tribute to the fugitive Buckskin
forestalled all baser considerations of pursuit and capture!

In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger, crowding his horse
and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace keenly watchful, Dunn suppressed
and pale. In half a minute they were leading him a length; and when
their horse again settled down to his steady work, the stranger was
already lost in the circling dust that followed them. But the victors
seemed disappointed. The obscurity had completely hidden all but the
vague outlines of the mysterious driver.

"He's not our game, anyway," whispered Dunn. "Drive on."

"But if it was some friend of his," suggested Brace uneasily, "what
would you do?"

"What I SAID I'd do," responded Dunn savagely. "I don't want five
minutes to do it in, either; we'll be half an hour ahead of that d--d
fool, whoever he is. Look here; all you've got to do is to put me in the
trail to that cabin. Stand back of me, out of gun-shot, alone, if you
like, as my deputy, or with any number you can pick up as my posse.
If he gets by me as Nellie's lover, you may shoot him or take him as a
horse thief, if you like."

"Then you won't shoot him on sight?"

"Not till I've had a word with him."

"But--"

"I've chirped," said the sheri