Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/107

 "I ain't seen him since just about sundown," said Bill, glibly. "Any you fellows seen Tom?"

Nobody had. They stood around Allison, politely interested. Maybe he'd gone to town to see a girl.

"I thought he was in charge here?"

"Well, that wouldn't worry Tom none, if he wanted to see a girl."

Allison was suspicious, but he could do nothing. Tom knew every back trail of the neighborhood, every gate in the wire.

He refused Slim's offer of coffee and stood around for a few minutes with his coat collar turned up against the freezing night wind, then he turned and lunged back through the darkness to the road and his car, the warrant still in his pocket.

But as a matter of fact, he was very near success once on his way back to Ursula, had he only known it.

Tom had no idea of being cheated out of his trip. Long before the lights of Allison's car appeared down the road, he had made a plan and prepared for his escape. True, the horse he roped in the darkness turned out to be a green horse, but the Miller was weary and he needed speed. He managed to saddle it and tie it up, and to slip off into the night when Allison appeared was a simple matter.

But from that time on he was in difficulty. The horse was kinky from the start; even holding him while opening gates in the wire was a test for Tom's long lean body, and every time he was mounted he threatened to break again. And seven miles out of Ursula Tom rode unseeing under a sagging telephone wire and was neatly pitched off backwards, with a cut across his forehead which blinded him with blood. When he picked himself up the animal was gone.

He swore furiously and tried to bind up his head. The blood froze almost as soon as it ran. But his anger only made him more determined, and in his high-heeled boots he set out to walk the seven miles remaining. That was when Allison almost had him. He passed within thirty feet of where Tom had dropped down into a swale when he saw the headlights.