“Ride back and meet them, Harry,” Tom suggested. “Show them that one point that we noticed.”
Hazelton accordingly dug his heels into the flank of his pony, starting off at a gallop.
Two or three minutes passed. Then Mr. Ellsworth leaped from his seat in the foremost automobile, standing erect in the car and pointing excitedly.
“Look there!” he shouted lustily. “What's happening?”
Away off, at the further side of the Man-killer, a horseman had suddenly ridden into sight from behind a sand pile. His swiftly moving pony had gotten within three hundred yards of the chief engineer before Tom looked up to behold the newcomer.
From where the railroad officials watched they could hear nothing, though they saw a succession of indistinct spittings from something in the right hand of the horseman.
“It's a revolver the fellow's shooting at Mr. Reade!” gasped Superintendent Hawkins, leaping into the car beside the general manager. “Turn your speed on, man--make a lightning lash across the Man-killer!”
Away shot the automobile, not wholly to the liking of two eastern men who sat in the directors' car.
Tom Reade had realized his danger. Having nothing with which to fight, Reade had sprung his horse eastward and was racing for life.
The unknown had emptied his weapon, but that did not deter him, for, continuing his wild pursuit, the stranger could be seen to draw another automatic revolver.
The bullets striking all about Tom's pony ploughed up the sand.
Within a minute the men in the speeding automobile were close enough to hear the sputtering crackle of the pistol shots.
“There goes Hazelton right into the face of death!” gasped Mr. Ellsworth, who remained in a standing position. “Foolish of the boy, but magnificent!”
Harry had turned some time before, but now those in the automobile saw that Hazelton was riding squarely to Tom's side, despite the constant fusillade of bullets.
Both pistols were now emptied, but the pursuer, letting his reins fall on the neck of his madly galloping pony, was inserting fresh cartridges in the magazine chambers of his pistols.
CHAPTER XIX. THE SECRET OF ASHBY'S CUNNING
At a considerable distance behind the automobile came another rescue party. This was made up of about two score of Arizona horsemen. Many of these men were armed. At the saddle bows of some of the hung raw-hide lariats that the owners unwound as they sped forward.