Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/64

60 the common, hard-working variety of cow-puncher, and presently the word went among them from the man riding nearest to Bill that if young Lanning were taken it would be worth a hundred dollars to each of them. Two months' pay for two days' work. That was fair enough. They also began to look to their guns. It was not that a single one of them could have been bought for a man-killing at that or any other price, perhaps, but this was simply a bonus to carry them along toward what they considered an honest duty.

Nevertheless, it was a different crew that rode over the hills away from the Merchant place. There was even something different in their riding. They had begun for the sake of the excitement. Now they were working carefully, riding with less abandon, jockeying their horses, for each man was laboring to be in on the kill.

They had against them a good horse and a stanch horseman. Never had the pinto dodged his share of honest running, and this day was no exception. He gave himself whole-heartedly to his task, and he stretched the legs of the ponies behind him. Yet he had a great handicap. He was tough, but the ranch horses of John Merchant were of the Morgan breed, vicious, a good many of them, but solid and wiry and fast enough for any purpose—such as clinging to a long trail over hill and valley.

Above all, they came out from a night of rest. Their lungs were clean of dust. Their legs were full of running. And the pinto, for all his courage, could not meet that handicap and beat it. That truth slowly sank in upon the mind of the fugitive as he put the game little cattle pony into his best stride. He tried pinto in the level going. He tried him in the rough. And in both conditions the posse gained