Daredevil Riders

No Rose Is Blue

Chapter 3.     No Rose is Blue?

Farr behind them, on the other side of the hill, they heard the men of Jumping Creek go by like a storm. They listened, looked at one another, and then grinned.

"The gents that stay inside the law, they don't seem to have very good brains in their heads!" Said Birdman. "Ever notice that? They're always wrong!"

"But when they're right, they hang a lot of gents from the trees," suggested Mr. Green. For his own part, he did not like crowing until a job

was well finished and the danger gone, ey came down off the slope and turned up through pleasant valley that ran near the railroad line. In the distance, they could see the flash of the wheel-polished rails with the sunlight running on them like swift water, tinted blue. The trail was dim. They left it and took the straight way up the valley. This was still a longer way to the higher mountains, and security, but, again, it I would save the horses. And Mr. Green knew the value of fresh horses in any pinch. His admiration For Birdman was growing every moment when, from behind, they heard a horse neigh.

"What could that be?" asked Henry, scowling. He stared back over his shoulder. Then, with a groan, he pointed.

Bates saw the picture that came out of the trees be hind them. There were a dozen men, all with rifles, all riding hard, and at the head of them journeyed a tall man with a face so thin that his features stood out in a relief of highlights and shadows, even from this distance. He rode on a small, mouse-colored mustang, that looked more mule than horse. It took small strides, but so many of them that it easily kept in the lead.

This man now turned and waved to his companions, and then pointed ahead where the robbers were in full flight.

Well, it was bad luck that somebody among the men of Jumping Creek had guessed that the fugitives might take the way over the short trail, uphill. However, this would be the point where freshness of horses would tell. Goodness of horses would tell, too, and the one thing on which Pop Dickerman never spared money was the sort of horseflesh with which he provided his missonaries of crime.

All five animals legged it valiantly, and in an instant it was clear that they had the wind and the foot of the pursuit.

They swerved along the edge of a marsh. They sped up a slope. They twisted through a denseness of trees. And then, suddenly,Birdman in the lead drew rein so hard that his horse stopped on braced leg, the hoofs plowing

There's somebody ahead he called softly Then Bates heend it too. Right and left, as though spread out in a long line, he heard horses coming. He heard the shrill, penetrating squeak of saddle leather, and the far-off marmar of voices. He could see clearly what had happened. The men of Jumping Creek had divided. Half had taken the rear trail of the robbers; half had wang around the hill and blocked the robbers in their advance of the valley. Now they were blocked as neatly as though they had been cooped in a box!

They could turn left-up the staggering face of a rocky hill, treeless, bare, open to a sweeping rifle fire. Or else they could turn right into the stench, the mud, the puz ting mists and vapors of the marsh. Birdman took the only possible course. He swung the black horse to the side and struck right into the marsh; and as Bates fol lowed, last of the three, a sudden crash of rifle fire told him that he had been seen.

That made their chances one point worse. He liked to estimate chances. When the crowd gath ered in the street of Jumping Creek, their chances of getting away had been about one in three. After they cleared out of town and escaped the first

rifle fire, they had chances of two to one in their favor. When they put the high hill behind them and swung up easy grade of the valley that contained the railroad, they had chances of four to one in their favor. Even the sight of the pursuit in the rear only decreased their chances by a point. Then that encounter with the unseen line of riders, blocking their way, beat them down to the bottom. They had one chance in five, as they turned into the marsh. They were seen, and they had a chance in six.Birdman called, with inimitable cheer: "We'll get to the railroad, and we'll gallop up the ties and laugh our heads off at those fools!"

Mr. Green looked forward, and Saw Birdman riding his horse out of a depth of thick, green slime that mantled the fine creature from the ears down and altered its color completely.

The marsh was a horror. It was a horrible muddy wash through which the horses broke. But they floundered on, keeping right behind Birdman-who had the knowing brain!

They held on. Presently the foulness of the marsh, the thickness of the trees that made a hot twilight, here, in the middle of the day, gave way to glimpses of light, and suddenly they were out on the side of the rail road grade, with Birdman already cutting the wires of the big fence!

Two strands had hardly clanged apart and whipped back under the clippers Of Birdman when voices shouted to the side, and Mr. Green had a sight of a tall man with a face as thin as starvation, riding a little mouse-colored mustang out from the edge of the marsh. He had found a solid way across the marsh-there

was hardly a bit of mud above the hocks of his mustang

Bates, as he backed his horses violently, saw the stream of armed men break out behind that leader. Bates snatched out his right-hand Colt and opened fire slowly, accurately, intent to kill. He wanted to kill that tall man. He wanted to kill that mouse-colored horse. He had a strange feeling.