At dark they were on the edge of the Arroyo Grande and Captain Jack had closed the distance between them until less than a hundred yards was between the heels of the filly and the head of the stallion behind her.  She turned east along the arroyo, followed it a mile, seeking a crossing, then doubled straight north toward the Cimarron.  Captain Jack hung to her trail like a hound.  In the blackness that preceded the storm she could not lose him.  With almost uncanny sureness he picked her out—­following, following, never giving the maverick a moment’s rest.  Yet it seemed that the distance she kept ahead was measured, so alert and watchful was she always.  Both were dripping with sweat.  Try as he would, it seemed impossible for Captain Jack to win those few yards that would put the filly in reach of the rope the Ramblin’ Kid held ready to cast until the inky darkness made it impossible to risk a throw.

The mare splashed into the Cimarron.

A dazzling zigzag flash of lightning, the first of the storm, and the Ramblin’ Kid saw the filly struggling in the yellow wind-whipped current.  A moment later and Captain Jack was swimming close behind her.  On the north side of the river the mare yielded to the drive of the tempest and turned east down the stream.  A rocky gorge running at right angles toward the north offered shelter from the lashing wind and rain.  Up the ravine the maverick headed.  A rush of muddy water down the canyon sent pursued and pursuer slipping and sliding and climbing for safety high up on the brush-covered, torrent-swept hillside.  The constant blaze and tremble of lightning illumined the whole range.  A wolf, terrified by the storm, seeking cover, crouched in the shelter of a black rock-cliff.  The Ramblin’ Kid saw the creature.  His hand instinctively slipped under his slicker and gripped the gun at his hip.

“Hell! what’s th’ use of killin’ just to kill?” he murmured.  His hold on the gun relaxed.  A bolt of lightning slivered the rock above the wolf; there was an acrid odor of burning hair.  The next flash showed the wolf stretched dead twenty feet below the cliff.  “Well, I’ll be damned!” the Ramblin’ Kid whispered as he bowed his head before the gale, “that was funny!  Guess God himself figured it was time for that poor cuss to die!”

In the last quarter of the night, at the North Springs, when the storm had spent itself and the white moon looked down on a drenched and flood-washed earth, the ‘Ramblin’ Kid dropped his rope over the head of the Gold Dust maverick—­barely twenty feet ahead of the horse he rode—­conquered by the superior nerve, muscle and endurance of Captain Jack, still the greatest outlaw the Kiowa range had ever known!