d them.

His new horse had not had time to get warm before Duane reached a high
sandy bluff below which lay the willow brakes. As far as he could see
extended an immense flat strip of red-tinged willow. How welcome it was
to his eye! He felt like a hunted wolf that, weary and lame, had reached
his hole in the rocks. Zigzagging down the soft slope, he put the bay to
the dense wall of leaf and branch. But the horse balked.

There was little time to lose. Dismounting, he dragged the stubborn
beast into the thicket. This was harder and slower work than Duane cared
to risk. If he had not been rushed he might have had better success. So
he had to abandon the horse--a circumstance that only such sore straits
could have driven him to. Then he went slipping swiftly through the
narrow aisles.

He had not gotten under cover any too soon. For he heard his pursuers
piling over the bluff, loud-voiced, confident, brutal. They crashed into
the willows.

"Hi, Sid! Heah's your hoss!" called one, evidently to the man Duane had
forced into a trade.

"Say, if you locoed gents'll hold up a little I'll tell you somethin',"
replied a voice from the bluff.

"Come on, Sid! We got him corralled," said the first speaker.

"Wal, mebbe, an' if you hev it's liable to be damn hot. THET FELLER WAS
BUCK DUANE!"

Absolute silence followed that statement. Presently it was broken by a
rattling of loose gravel and then low voices.

"He can't git across the river, I tell you," came to Duane's ears. "He's
corralled in the brake. I know thet hole."

Then Duane, gliding silently and swiftly through the willows, heard no
more from his pursuers. He headed straight for the river. Threading a
passage through a willow brake was an old task for him. Many days and
nights had gone to the acquiring of a skill that might have been envied
by an Indian.

The Rio Grande and its tributaries for the most of their length in Texas
ran between wide, low, flat lands covered by a dense growth of willow.
Cottonwood, mesquite, prickly pear, and other growths mingled with the
willow, and altogether they made a matted, tangled copse, a thicket that
an inexperienced man would have considered impenetrable. From above,
these wild brakes looked green and red; from the inside they were gray
and yellow--a striped wall. Trails and glades were scarce. There were
a few deer-runways and sometimes little paths made by peccaries--the
jabali, or wild pigs, of Mexico. The ground was c