“Great guns!” ejaculated one of the highwaymen, “that wolf’s right under our feet.  There he goes now.  I hear him prowling past.”  For with the howl, Leloo had started his cayuse gently, and the wise creature was slipping beneath the dreaded boulder almost noiselessly.  The boy fairly held his breath.  Suppose they should peer through the dark, and see that it was a horse and rider, and no wild animal padding up the trail?  Then his wolf friend from the heights answered him, and Leloo once more lifted his head, and the strange half-barking, half-sobbing cry again broke the silence.  He was well past the boulder now, ten, twenty, thirty yards, when his innocent little cayuse gave that peculiar snort which a horse always gives when some sudden fear or danger threatens.  The animal’s instinct had evidently detected the presence of enemies.

“It’s a horseman, not a wolf,” fairly yelled a voice behind him; but Leloo had already struck the cayuse a smart blow on the flank, at which the animal bunched its four hoofs together, shivered, snorted again, then plunged, galloping like mad down the trail, down, blindly down into the darkness ahead.  One, two, three sharp revolver shots rang out behind him, the bullets falling wide of their mark in the blackness of the night, rapidly running feet that seemed to gain upon him, the crash of a falling man, then terrible language—­all rang in his ears in quick succession, but the boy never drew rein, never halted.  On plunged the horse, heedlessly, wildly, but Leloo stuck to his back, scorning the fear of a horrible death in the canyon below, thinking only of the danger of the treasure-laden stage and of the safety of Big Bill, the driver, whom his father loved, and whom every Indian of the Lillooet tribe respected.

The stones were now rattling from the rush of his horse’s hoofs, and once or twice the boy held his breath, as they swung round a boulder in the dark, and the sturdy animal almost lost its balance.  Sometimes he heard the robbers scrambling down the trail far above him, the trail he had already covered, and twice they fired on him; but the kindly darkness saved him.  He was nearing the foot of the mountain now, and the cayuse was beginning to heave badly, but Leloo still struck the sweating flanks, and the creature still plunged on, until, finally, in fear and exhaustion, it stumbled.  Instantly it recovered itself, but Leloo knew that this was the first sign of the coming end.  Then only did he stop.  In his mad ride Leloo had been so intently listening for sounds from behind that he never once thought of sounds ahead, and in this pause of the rattling hoofs and flying stones, his ears caught the rumble of wheels coming towards him, the gentle beat of six horses trotting slowly, and the cheery whistle of the big Canadian who drove the Cariboo stage.  As Leloo came slowly upon them, the big driver called, “Who’s there—­ahead in the trail?  Who’s shooting around here?”