nd quickly.

Cheyenne made the saddle on the run, reined toward the corral, and,
passing it on the run, turned in the saddle to glance back. Sneed was in
the doorway. Cheyenne jerked his horse to one side and dug in the spurs.
Sneed's rifle barked and a bullet whined past Cheyenne's head. He
crouched in the saddle. Again a bullet whistled across the sunlit
clearing. The cow-horse was going strong. A tree flicked past, then
another and another.

Cheyenne straightened in the saddle and glanced back through the timber.
He saw a jumble of men and horses in front of the cabin. "They got just
two hosses handy, and they're rode down," he muttered as he sped through
the shadows of the forest.

Across another sun-swept meadow he rode, and into the timber again--and
before he realized it he was back on the mountain trail that led to the
valley. He took the first long, easy grade on the run, checked at the
switchback, and pounded down the succeeding grade, still under cover of
the hillside timber, but rapidly nearing the more open country of brush
and rock.

As he reined in at the second switchback he saw, far below, and going at
a lively trot, seven or eight horses, and behind them, hazing them along
as fast as the trail would permit, Little Jim.

"If Sneed's outfit gets to the rim before he makes the next turn,
they'll get him sure," reasoned Cheyenne.

He thought of turning back and trying to stop Sneed's men. He thought of
turning his horse loose and ambushing the mountainmen, afoot. But
Cheyenne did not want to kill. His greatest fear was that Little Jim
might get hurt. As he hesitated, a rifle snarled from the rim above, and
he saw Little Jim's horse flinch and jump forward.

"I reckon it's up to us, old Steel Dust," he said to his horse.

Hoping to draw the fire of the men above, he eased his horse round the
next bend and then spurred him to a run. Below, Little Jim was jogging
along, within a hundred yards or so of the bend that would screen him
from sight. Realizing that he could never make the next turn on the run,
Cheyenne gripped with his knees, and leaned back to meet the shock as
Steel Dust plunged over the end of the turn and crashed through the
brush below. A slug whipped through the brush and clipped a twig in
front of the horse.

Steel Dust swerved and lunged on down through the heavy brush. A naked
creek-bed showed white and shimmering at the bottom of the slope. Again
a slug whined through the sunlig