The steel-jacketed .405 had gone through him on its uninterrupted
way to hum past Gale's positon.
The remaining two raiders frantically spurred their horses and fled
up the valley. Ladd sent Sol after them. It seemed to Gale, even
though he realized his excitement, that Blanco Sol made those horses
seem like snails. The raiders split, one making for the eastern
outlet, the other circling back of the mesquites. Ladd kept on
after the latter. Then puffs of white smoke and rifle shots faintly
crackling told Jim Lash's hand in the game. However, he succeeded
only in driving the raider back into the valley. But Ladd had
turned the other horseman, and now it appeared the two raiders
were between Lash above on the stony slope and Ladd below on the level.
There was desperate riding on part of the raiders to keep from being hemmed
in closer. Only one of them got away, and he came riding for life down
under the eastern wall. Blanco Sol settled into his graceful, beautiful
swing. He gained steadily, though he was far from extending
himself. By Gale's actual count the raider fired eight times in
that race down the valley, and all his bullets went low and wide.
He pitched the carbine away and lost all control in headlong flight.
Some few hundred rods to the left of Gale the raider put his horse
to the weathered slope. He began to climb. The horse was superb,
infinitely more courageous than his rider. Zigzag they went up
and up, and when Ladd reached the edge of the slope they were
high along the cracked and guttered rampart.
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