San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-02-15

IOuSner WORK, cruel obstacles were De-
fore.
We held steadily for that notch in the
blue Sierra. The mountain lines grew
sharper, the country where we trav-
eled rougher, every stride. We came
upon a wide tract covered with wild
sage bushes. These delayed and bafled
us. 1t was pygmy forest of trees,
mature and complete, but no higher
than the knee. Sometimes we could
find natural pathways for few rods.
Then these strayed aside or closed up,
and we must plunge straight on. We
lost time; moments we lost, more pre-
cious than if every one were marked by
drop in a clepsydra, and each drop as
1t fell changed itself and tinkled in the
basin priceless pearl.
at worries me, this delay" said to
Brent.
"They lost as much-more time than
we" he said.
And he crowded on, more desperately,
as man rides for dearer than life-as
lover rides for love.
We tore along, breaking through and
over the sage bushes, each man where
best he could. Fulano began to show
me what leaps were in him. gave him
his head. No bride would have held
him. kept my mastery by the voice,
or rather by the perfect identification of
his will with mine. Our minds acted
together. "Save strength" still warned
him, ''save strength, my friend, for the
mountains and the last leaps!'
!, A little pathway in the sage bushes
suddenly opened before me, as q lane
riffs in the press of hurryiEg legions
mid the crush Of city thoroughfare.
I dashed on hundred yards in advance
of my comrades.
What was this? The bushes trampled
and broken down, just as we in our
passage were trampling and breaking
them. What?
Hoof marks in the dust!
"The trailw cried, ''the traill''
They sprsng toward me. Brent fol-
lowed the line with his eye. He galloped
forward, with look Of triumph.
Suddenly saw him fling himself half
ont of his saddle and clutch at some OBJ
ject. Still going at speed, and holding
on by one leg alone, after the Indian
fashion for sport or shelter against an
arrow or shot, he picked up something
from the bushes, regained his seat and
waved his treasure to US. We ranged up
and rode beside him over gap in the
sage. s sf-aaq III
A lady's glove!-that was what he had
stopped to recover. An old buckskn
riding gauntlet, neatly stitched about
the wrist and pinked on the wristlet. A
pretty glove, strangely, almost tragical-
ly, feminine in this desolation. A well
worn glove that had seen better days,
like its mistress, but never any day so
good as this, when it proved to us that
we were on the sure path of rescue.
81 take up the gauntlet" said Brent.
Scare qui le touchew
We said nothing more; for this uncon-
scious token, this silent cry for help,
made the danger seem more closely i'm
minent. We pressed on. No flinching
in any of the horses. Where we could
we were going at speed. Where they
could the horses kept side by side, nerv-
ing each other. Companionship sus-
tanned them in that terrible ride.
And now in front the purple Sierra
was growing brown and rising up dis
tinct wall, cleft visibly with dell, gully,
ravine and canyon. The sawteeth OF
the ridge defined themselves sharply into
peak and pinnacle. Broad fields of cool
snow cleaned upon the SUBMITS.
We were ascending now all the time
into the subalpine regions. We crossed
great sloping savannas, deep in dry,
rustling grass, where nation of cattle
might pasture. We plunged through
broad wastes of hot sand. We flung
ourselves down and up the red sides of
water worn gullies. We took breakneck
leaps across dry quebradas in the clay.
We clattered across stony arroyos, long
ing thirstily for the gush of water that
had flowed there not many months be-
fore.
The trail was everywhere plain. No
prairie craft was needed to trace it.
Here the chase had gone, but few hours
ago; here, across grassy slopes, trampling
the grass as if a mower had passed that
way; here, blowing YEARLY through the
sand; here, treading the red, crumbling
clay; here, breaking down the side of a
bank; here, leaving the sharp hoof track
in the dry mud of fled torrent. Every
where straight path, pointing for that
deepening gap in the Sierra, Luggernel
alley, the only gate of escape.
Brents unerring judgment had di-
vined the course Alright. On he led,
charging along the trail as if he were
tramnlinn already ON the carcasses of