e after us!" exclaimed Jack, reading the night-borne sounds
aright.

CHAPTER XIX.

BUCK BRADLEY'S AUTOMOBILE.

How their escape had been discovered so soon, was, had there been time
for it, a matter of speculation. There was little doubt, though, that
some of the searchers, returning unexpectedly, had come across the
bound mestizos, and had at once given the alarm.

Coyote Pete glanced about him, as if looking for some means of escape.
The turn of the road that they hoped to make was still some distance
ahead, but the road itself lay stretched, like a white, dusty ribbon,
just before them. In the darkness, it showed clearly, and, as his eyes
fell upon it, Coyote Pete's mind was made up.

"Take to the road," he cried, "there's a gulch just a little way up
ahead of us."

In fact, the plainsman's watchful eye had detected, a short distance
ahead, a black void in the surface of the hillside, which he guessed to
be a deep arroyo.

Their horses' hoofs clattered in an unpleasantly loud manner, as they
reached the hard highway, and began to hammer down it, still bearing
due east. Behind them now they could hear distinctly the yells and
shouts of the pursuers. They were still some distance off, however.

"Let 'em howl," remarked Coyote Pete. "The lung exercise is all
they'll git. With this start, we ought to beat them out easy."

"Look! Look!" cried Ralph, suddenly pointing ahead. "What's that?"

They all saw it at the same moment--two big lights, like eyes.
Seemingly, the astonishing apparition was coming toward them at a good
speed. The shafts of light cast forward cut the darkness like fiery
swords.

The fugitives paused, bewildered. What did this new circumstance
betoken?

"What do you make her out to be, Pete?" asked Jack.

"Why, boy, if it warn't thet we're down in such a benighted part of
ther country, I should say that yonder was a gasoline gig."

"An automobile!" exclaimed Walt. "It does look like one, for a fact."

"And, to my way of thinking, a naughtymobile is jes' about the ticket
fer us, right now," grunted Pete. "Hark!"

There was no doubt now that the two shimmering bright lights ahead were
the head lanterns of an auto. They could hear the sharp cough of her
engines, as she took the hill.

"She's a powerful one, too," commented Ralph, listening. The Eastern
lad knew a good deal about motor cars. His face bore an interested
expression.

"I don't know who'd own one of th