Blindfolded Part 49

"How many were hurt?"

"Six or seven. Two of your fellows looked pretty bad when they was carried out."

We turned down a by-street, but as soon as the guard had disappeared we retraced our steps and hastened to the Thatcher stables.

The rain was whipped into our faces as we bent against the wind, and the whish and roar of the gale among the trees, and the rattle of loose boards and tins, as they were tossed and shaken behind the houses, gave a melancholy accompaniment to our hasty march.

"Hist!" said Fitzhugh in my ear. "Is that some one following us?"

I drew him into a corner, and peered back into the darkness.

"I can see no one."

"I thought I heard a man running."

"Wait a minute. If there is any one after us he must lose us right here."

We listened in silence. Only the plash of water and the voice of the storm came to our ears.

"Well, if they are looking for us they have gone the other way. Come along," I said.

We nearly missed the stable in the darkness, and it was several minutes before we roused Thatcher to a state in which he could put together the two ideas that we wanted to get in, and that it was his place to get up and let us in.

"Horses to-night?" he gasped, throwing up his hands. "Holy Moses! I couldn't think of letting the worst plug of the lot out in this storm."

"Well, I want your best."

"You'll have to do it, d.i.c.k," said Fitzhugh with a few words of explanation. "He'll make it all right for you."

"Where are you going?" said Thatcher.

"Oakland."

He threw up his hands once more.

"Great Scott! you can't do it. The horses can't travel fifty miles at night and in this weather. You'd best wait for the morning train. The express will be through here before five."

I hesitated a moment, but the chances of being stopped were too great.

"I must go," I said decidedly. "I can't wait here."

"I have it," said Thatcher. "By hard riding you can get to Niles in time to catch the freight as it goes up from San Jose. It will get you down in time for the first boat, if that's what you want."

"Good! How far is it?"

"We call it eighteen miles,--it's a little over that by the road.

There's only one nasty bit. That's in the canyon."

"I think we shall need the pleasure of your company," I said.

The stableman was moved by a conflict of feelings. He was much indisposed to a twenty-mile ride in the storm and darkness; yet he was plainly unwilling to trust his horses unless he went with them. I offered him a liberal price for the service.

"It's a bad job, but if you must, you must," he groaned. And he soon had three horses under the saddle.

I eyed the beasts with some disfavor. They were evidently half-mustang, and I thought undersized for such a journey. But I was to learn before the night was out the virtues of strength and endurance that lie in the blood of the Indian horse.

"Hist! What's that?" said Fitzhugh, extinguis.h.i.+ng the light.

The voices of the storm and the uneasy champing of the horses were the only sounds that rewarded a minute's listening.

"We must chance it," said I, after looking cautiously into the darkness, and finding no signs of a foe.

And in a moment more we were galloping down the street, the hoof-beats scarcely sounding in the softened earth of the roadway. Not a word was spoken after the start as we turned through the side streets to avoid the approaches to the hotel. I looked and listened intently, expecting each bunch of deeper darkness in the streets to start into life with shouts of men and crack of revolvers in an effort to stay our flight.

Thatcher led the way, and Fitzhugh rode by my side.

"Look there!" cried Fitzhugh in my ear. "There's some one running to the hotel!"

I looked, and thought I could see a form moving through the blackness.

The hotel could just be distinguished two blocks away. It might well be a scout of the enemy hastening to give the alarm.

"Never mind," I said. "We've got the start."

Thatcher suddenly turned to the west, and in another minute we were on the open highway, with the steady beat of the horses' hoofs splas.h.i.+ng a wild rhythm on the muddy road.

The wind, which had been behind us, now whipped the rain into our faces from the left, half blinding us as the gusts sent the spray into our eyes, then tugged fiercely at coats and hats as if nothing could be so pleasing to the powers of the air as to send our raiment in a witch's flight through the clouds.

With the town once behind us, I felt my spirits rise with every stroke of the horse's hoofs beneath me. The rain and the wind were friends rather than foes. Yet my arm pained me sharply, and I was forced to carry the reins in the whip hand.

Here the road was broader, and we rode three abreast, silent, watchful, each busy with his own thoughts, and all alert for the signs of chase behind. Thrice my heart beat fast with the sound in my ears of galloping pursuers. Thrice I laughed to think that the patter of falling drops on the roadway should deceive my sense of sound. Here the track narrowed, and Thatcher shot ahead, flinging mud and water from his horse's heels fair upon us. There it broadened once more, and our willing beasts pressed forward and galloped beside the stableman's till the hoofs beat in unison.

"There!" said Thatcher, suddenly pulling his horse up to a walk. "We're five miles out, and they've got a big piece to make up if they're on our track. We'll breathe the horses a bit."

The beasts were panting a little, but chafed at the bits as we walked them, and tossed their heads uneasily to the pelting of the storm.

"Hark!" I cried. "Did you hear that?" I was almost certain that the sound of a faint halloo came from behind us. I was not alone in the thought.

"The dern fools!" said Fitzhugh. "They want a long chase, I guess, to go through the country yelling like a pack of wild Injuns."

"I reckon 'twas an owl," said Thatcher; "but we might as well be moving.

We needn't take no chances while we've got a good set of heels under us.

Get up, boys."

The willing brutes shot forward into the darkness at the word, and tossed the rain-drops from their ears with many an angry nod.

Of the latter part of the journey I have but a confused remembrance. I had counted myself a good rider in former days, but I had not mounted a horse for years. I had slept but little in forty-eight hours, and, worst of all, my arm pained me more and more. With the fatigue and the jar of the steady gallop, it seemed to swell until it was the body and I the poor appendage to it. My head ached from the blow it had got, and in a stupor of dull pain I covered the weary miles. But for the comfortable Mexican saddle I fear I should have sunk under the fatigue and distress of the journey and left friends and enemies to find their way out of the maze as best they might.

I have a dim recollection of splas.h.i.+ng over miles of level road, drenched with water and buffeted by gusts of wind that faced us more and more, with the monotonous beat of hoofs ever in my ears, and the monotonous stride of the horse beneath me ever racking my tired muscles.

Then we slackened pace in a road that wound in sharp descent through a gap in the hills, with the rush and roar of a torrent beneath and beside us, the wind sweeping with wild blasts through the trees that lined the way and covered the hillside and seeming to change the direction of its attack at every moment.