"gp08w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

few words. I gripped her hand, gave her another pistol, and then we got
away on a fine moonlit trail. We had not gone a mile when I heard a
faint yell far behind. My game had been found out. There was nothing to
do but to ride for it now, and maybe to fight. But fighting was not
good; for I might be killed, and then the girl would be caught just the
same. We rode on--such a ride, the horses neck and neck, their hoofs
pounding the prairie like drills, rawbone to rawbone, a hell-to-split
gait. I knew they were after us, though I saw them but once on the crest
of a Divide about three miles behind. Hour after hour like that, with
ten minutes' rest now and then at a spring or to stretch our legs. We
hardly spoke to each other; but, nom de Dieu! my heart was warm to this
girl who had rode a hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours. Just
before dawn, when I was beginning to think that we should easy win the
race if the girl could but hold out, if it did not kill her, the chestnut
struck a leg into the crack of the prairie, and horse and girl spilt on
the ground together. She could hardly move, she was so weak, and her
face was like death. I put a pistol to the chestnut's head, and ended
it. The girl stooped and kissed the poor beast's neck, but spoke
nothing. As I helped her on my Tophet I put my lips to the sleeve of her
dress. Mother of Heaven! what could a man do--she was so dam' brave.

"Dawn was just breaking oozy and grey at the swell of the prairie over
the Jumping Sandhills. They lay quiet and shining in the green-brown
plain; but I knew that there was a churn beneath which could set those
swells of sand in motion, and make glory-to-God of an army. Who can tell
what it is? A flood under the surface, a tidal river-what? No man
knows. But they are sea monsters on the land. Every morning at sunrise
they begin to eddy and roll--and who ever saw a stranger sight? Bien, I
looked back. There were those four pirates coming on, about three miles
away. What was there to do? The girl and myself on my blown horse were
too much. Then a great idea come to me. I must reach and cross the
Jumping Sandhills before sunrise. It was one deadly chance.

"When we got to the edge of the sand they were almost a mile behind. I
was all sick to my teeth as my poor Tophet stepped into the silt. Sacre,
how I watched the dawn! Slow, slow, we dragged over that velvet powder.
As we reached the farther side I could feel it was beginning to move.
The sun was showing like the lid of an eye along the plain. I looked
back. All four horsemen were in the sand, plunging on towards us. By
the time we touched the brown-green prairie on the farther side the sand
was rolling behind us. The girl had not looked back. She seemed too
dazed. I jumped from the horse, and told her that she must push on alone
to the Fort, that Tophet could not carry both, that I should be in no
danger. She looked at me so deep--ah, I cannot tell how! then stooped
and kissed me between the eyes--I have never forgot. I struck Tophet,
and she was gone to her happiness; for before 'lights out!' she reached
the Fort and her lover's arms.

"But I stood looking back on the Jumping Sandhills. So, was there ever
a sight like that--those hills gone like a smelting-floor, the sunrise