To this very obvious statement the other made no reply.  He cut the last strand of the rope that bound Jack’s ankles so mercilessly, and stood up.  “You better take off your boots and rub some feeling into your feet while I make a hackamore for that horse.  The sooner we get out of this, the better.  What’s left of the Committee will probably be pretty anxious to see you.”

“Oh, damn the Committee!—­as Bill remarked after the trial.”  Jack made an attempt to remove one of his boots, found the pain intolerable and desisted with a groan.  “I wish they would show up,” he declared.  “I’d like to give them a taste of this foot-tying business!”

Dade went on tying the hackamore with a haste that might be called anxious.  With just two bullets left in the pistol and with no powder upon his person for further reloading, he could not share Jack’s eagerness to meet the Committee again.  When Surry gave over rolling with his tongue the little wheel in his bit, and with lifted head and eyes alert perked his ears forward towards the hill they had just crossed, he slipped the hackamore hurriedly into place and turned to his friend.

“You climb on to Surry, and we’ll pull out,” he said shortly.  “I wouldn’t give two pesos for this buckskin, but we’re going to add horse-stealing to our other crimes; and while it’s all right to damn the Committee, it’s just as well to do it at a distance, just now, old man.”

The caution fell flat, for Jack was wholly absorbed by the pain in his feet and ankles, as the blood was being forced into the congested veins.  Dade led the white horse close, to save him the discomfort of hobbling to it, and waited until Jack was in the saddle before he vaulted upon the tricky-eyed buckskin.  He led the way down into a shallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; and later, when trees and bushes and precipitous bluffs threatened to bar their way, he swung abruptly to the east and south.

“Maybe you won’t object so hard to Palo Alto now,” he bantered at last, when at dusk he ventured out upon “El Camino Real” (which is pure Spanish for “The King’s Highway"), that had linked Mission to Mission all down the fertile length of California when the land was wilderness.  “Solitude ought to feel good, after to-day.”  When he got no answer, Dade looked around at the other.

Jack’s face showed vaguely through the night fog creeping in from the clamorous ocean off to the west.  His legs were hanging free of the stirrups, and his hands rested upon the high saddle-horn.

“Say, Dade,” he asked irrelevantly and with a mystifying earnestness, “which do you think would kill a man quickest—­a slash across the throat, or a stab in the heart?”

“I wouldn’t call either one healthy.  Why?”

“I was just wondering,” Jack returned ambiguously.  “If you hadn’t happened along—­say, how did you happen to come?  Was that another sample of my fool’s luck?” Since the coincidence had not struck him before, one might guess that he was accustomed to having Dade at his elbow when he was most needed.