The advantage of the pursuit was soon shown as a shot from the right whistled by them.  Red Blaze, quick as lightning, fired at the flash of the rifle.

“I don’t know whether I hit him or not,” he said, judicially, “but the chances are pow’ful good that I did.  Still it looks as if they meant to hang on an’ likely we kin soon expect shots from the other side, too.  Then if they know the country as well as they ’pear to do they’ll have us clamped in a vise.”

As he spoke his eyes twinkled cheerfully out of his flaming countenance.

“You certainly seem to take it easy,” said Dick.

“I take it easy, ‘cause the jaws of that vise ain’t goin’ to clamp down.  Bein’ somewhat interested in a run for your life you haven’t noticed how dark it’s gettin’ up here on the heights an’ how hard it’s snowin’.  It’s comin’ down a lot thicker than it was when we crossed the first time.”

It was true.  Dick noticed now that the snow was pouring down, and that all the peaks and ridges were lost in the white whirlwind.

“I told you that I had been a traveler,” said Red Blaze.  “I’ve been as far as fifty miles from Townsville, and I know all the country in every direction, twenty miles from it, inch by inch.  Inside five minutes the snowstorm will be on us full blast, an’ we won’t be able to see more’n twenty yards away.  An’ that crowd that’s follerin’ won’t be able to see either.  An’ me knowin’ the ground inch by inch I’ll take you straight back to your regiment while they’ll get lost in the storm.”

There was room now in the road for the three to ride abreast, and they kept close together.  They heard once a shout behind them and saw the flash of a firearm in the white hurricane, but no bullet struck them, and they kept steadily on their course, Red Blaze directing with the sure instinct that comes of long use and habit.

Heavier and heavier grew the snow.  There was but little wind now, and it came straight down.  It seemed to Dick that the whole earth was blotted out by the white fall.  He and the sergeant resigned themselves completely to the guidance of Red Blaze, who never veered an inch from the right path.

“If I didn’t know the way my hoss would,” he said.  “I’d just give him his head an’ he’d take us straight to his warm stable in Townsville, an’ the two bundles of oats that I mean to give him.  I reckon it was pretty smart of me, wasn’t it, to order a snowstorm an’ have it come just when it was needed.”

Again the cheerful eyes twinkled in the flaming face.

“You’re certainly a winner,” said Dick, “and you win for us all.”

The snow was now so deep in the pass that they could not proceed at great speed, but they did the best they could, and, as Red Blaze said, their best, although it might be somewhat slow, was certainly better than that of Skelly and his men.  Dick believed in fact that the raiders had been compelled to abandon the pursuit.