Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/267

Rh Black Bart leaped sidewise, keeping his head toward the master, and he howled in troubled fashion.

“Whereaway are they now?” muttered Barry, and looked back again.

A great distance behind, hardly distinguishable now, the dust of the posse was blending into the landscape and losing itself against a gray background.

“If they's nothin' wrong behind, what's bitin' you, Bart. You gettin' hungry, maybe? Want to hurry home?”

Another howl, still louder, answered him.

“Go on, then, and show me where they's trouble.”

Black Bart whirled and darted off almost straight ahead, but bearing up a hill slightly south of their course. Toward the top of this eminence he changed his lope for a skulking trot that brought his belly fur trailing on the ground.

“They's somethin' ahead of us, Satan!” cried the master softly. “What could that be? It's men, by the way Bart sneaks up to look at 'em. They's nothin' else that he'd do that way for. Easy, boy, and go soft!”

The stallion cut his gallop into a slinking trot, his head lowered, even his ears flat back, and glided up the hillside. Barry swung to the ground and crawled to the top of the hill. What he saw was a dozen mounted men swinging down into the low, broad scoop of ground beyond the hill. They raced with their hat-brims standing stiff up in the wind.