“You’re right,” he cried, “I’m Bill Skelly, an’ we want your horses an’ arms.  We need ’em in our business.  Now, just hop down an’ deliver.  We’re twenty to three.”

“You come forward at your own risk!” cried the sergeant, and Skelly, despite the numbers at his back, wavered.  He saw that the man who held the rifle aimed at his heart had nerves of steel, and he did not dare advance knowing that he would be shot at once from the saddle.  A victory won by Skelly’s men with Skelly dead was no victory at all to Skelly.

The guerilla reined back his horse, and his men retreated with him.  But the three knew well that it was no withdrawal.  The mountaineers rode among some scrub that grew between the road and the cliff; and Whitley exclaimed to his two comrades: 

“Come boys, we must ride for it!  It’s our business to get back with the dispatches to Colonel Newcomb as soon as possible, an’ not let ourselves be delayed by this gang.”

“That is certainly true,” said Dick.  “Lead on, Mr. Petty, and we’ll cross the mountain as fast as we can.”

Red Blaze started at once in a gallop, and Dick and the sergeant followed swiftly after.  But Sergeant Whitley held his cocked rifle in hand and he cast many backward glances.  A great shout came from Skelly and his band when they saw the three take to flight, and the sergeant’s face grew grimmer as the sound reached his ears.

“Keep right in the middle of the road, boys,” he said.  “We can’t afford to have our horses slip.  I’ll hang back just a little and send in a bullet if they come too near.  This rifle of mine carries pretty far, farther, I expect, than any of theirs.”

“I’m somethin’ on the shoot myself,” said Red Blaze.  “I love peace, but it hurts my feelin’s if anybody shoots at me.  Them fellers are likely to do it, an’ me havin’ a rifle in my hands I won’t be able to stop the temptation to fire back.”

As he spoke the raiders fired.  There was a crackling of rifles, little curls of blue smoke rose in the pass, and bullets struck on the frozen earth, while two made the snow fly from bushes by the side of the road.  The sergeant raised his own rifle, longer of barrel than the average army weapon, and pulled the trigger.  He had aimed at Skelly, but the leader swerved, and a man behind him rolled off his horse.  The others, although slowing their speed a little, in order to be out of the range of that deadly rifle, continued to come.

The pursuit at first seemed futile to Dick, because they would soon descend into Townsville’s valley, and the raiders could not follow them into the midst of an entire regiment.  But presently he saw their plan.  The pass now widened out with a few hundred yards of level space on either side of the road thickly covered with forest.  The branches of the trees were bare, but the undergrowth was so dense that horsemen could he hidden in it.  Bands of the raiders darted into the woods both to right and left, and he knew that advancing on a straight line one or the other of the parties expected to catch the fugitives who must follow the curves of the road.