"Keep it up, Cal! Whoop it! They're all a-going. Never mind any cattle. Whoop it!"
"There come the redskins!" shouted Cal, at that moment, and then he seemed to almost hold his breath.
"I saw 'em," coolly responded Sam. "We'll reach good cover before they get here. The drove's running fine."
Sam was cool enough, but every muscle of his wiry body seemed to be uncommonly alive, and the horse he was on dashed hither and thither as if he also understood the matter.
"They're gaining on us," shouted Cal, at the end of another minute. "More'n a dozen of 'em. What can we two do against so many?"
"Keep cool, Cal. I'll show you when we get to the timber," replied Sam. "We're going to save every hoof of this lot, but they may get away with the other drove. I'm only half sure 'bout that, though."
The mob of mules and horses before them had been whipped and shouted into a furious run, and the thud of their hoofs was worth hearing. The best runners were streaming out ahead, and the heavier, slower animals were sagging behind as a sort of rear-guard. Sam worked vigorously for the rescue of those slow horses, and he hardly turned his head to take a look at the Indians. Cal imitated him as well as he could, except about the looking, and with every bound of the red mustang he justified Sam's remark:
"He rides like an Indian. Isn't he a fine young feller? Reckon the old colonel 'll say I was right. I'll save his boy for him if I have to lose the whole drove--and my own hair, too; but they won't get that for nothing."
Cal Evans could not know what was passing in the mind of the swarthy cowboy. His own brain and every nerve of his body seemed to be all a tingle of excitement. He was now able to think about it and to be proud that he felt no fear. That is, no fear concerning anything but the horses.
On, on, on, went that tumultuous race, and the line of forest was very near now. It was a sort of natural barrier, stretching across the plain as if put there to check the sweep of "norther" storms and prairie fires, and any sort of stampedes. The middle of it was a winding ravine or slough, and at some seasons it was a river, instead of a string of ponds for buffalo wallows. All the wild or tame quadrupeds on that plain knew the value of Slater's Branch, and some of them, and all of the men, knew that it never quite went dry, and that its faculty to become a river could be exercised at any time on short notice, when the snow in the mountains melted rapidly or when a cloud-burst came on this side of the Sierra.