Durham stood up in his stirrups and shouted to them to come back, but he might as well have called to the wind. The fever of the chase was in their veins, the reckless dash of the hunter fired by the excitement of the greatest of all pursuits, a man-hunt. While this held them, they raced, aimlessly, uselessly, but persistently.
Those with cooler heads and better judgment reined in their horses. Gale found himself in the midst of an excited throng with whom he was carried forward for some distance before he could get free.
"He"s right, lads, he"s right," he shouted. "There"s no chance to follow the track till it"s daylight. Don"t smother it. Come back."
"Chase him to the range, boys, chase him to the range. We"ll catch him at the rise," yelled one of the men in the lead, and with an answering cheer the galloping crowd held on.
Those who had remained on the road were starting to return to the township when Gale rode back. Hearing him coming, they waited to see who it was.
"They"re mad," he cried, as he came up. "If they get near him, he"ll shoot them as they come, and they"ll destroy every sign of his tracks."
"It"s done now," Durham exclaimed impatiently. "We"ll have to leave them; it"s no use going after them now."
He turned his horse"s head and set off for the township with Brennan at his side and the rest trailing after him. At the station he and Brennan wheeled their horses into the yard while the others went on to their homes.
"I shall be away with the dawn," Durham said, as soon as the horses were stabled and they were in their quarters. "It"s the old story. That fellow has had so much luck up to the present he"s lost his head. He wants to show us how clever he really is."
"There"s not much sense in what he did to-night; anyone in the crowd might have had a rifle, and there was no doubt who he was--he carried his life in his hands for nothing, it seems to me."
"They always do sooner or later. He"s an old hand at the game, or he wouldn"t be so anxious to let us know he"s still in the neighbourhood."
While he was speaking, the door opened and Soden, the hotelkeeper, excitedly entered the room.
"Here, come across the road, quick. Come and have a look at it. Hang me if this doesn"t beat c.o.c.k-fighting. They"ve stuck up the pub and cleared off with the till and all the takings," he exclaimed.
He led the way to his hotel, the front door of which was open.
"As I found it," he said as he pulled it to until it was ajar. "When we closed for the night it was locked and bolted. Look at it."
Durham carefully examined it.
"Opened by an expert burglar," he said quietly.
"No one but a master of the craft could have done it so neatly. Show me the till."
Soden led them into the bar. The till, empty, was on the floor; every cupboard door was forced and the place in chaos.
As they stood looking at the wreck, voices sounded outside and other men trooped in.
"Here, I say," the first-comer cried. "Here"s a pretty go. Someone has been in my place and cleared every pennypiece out of it and--hullo!" he exclaimed as he looked at the state of Soden"s bar, one of the show places of the town under ordinary conditions. "You seem to have had them too, and there"s a mob outside, all with the same story."
There was no gainsaying what had happened. While the men of the town were out careering after the mysterious Rider, their homes had been rifled of everything of value. The town was stripped as clean as though a tribe of human locusts had swept through it. Two places only were unvisited, the bank and Mrs. Eustace"s cottage, in both of which places lights had been burning.
Not even the police-station escaped, though not until Durham and Brennan returned to it did they realise the fact. What money there was in the place had vanished; a watch Brennan had left hanging over his bunk had disappeared and, as if to emphasise the visit, the pages of the record book were smeared with ink and defaced.
Brennan glanced covertly at his superior who, with a heavy frown on his brow, stood scowling at the defaced book.
"Have the revolvers gone?" he asked suddenly.
Brennan turned to the locker where they were kept.
"No, sir, they are here all right. I fancy he must have been disturbed before he could finish his work here. None of the cupboards have been touched."
"Whom do you suspect?" Durham asked sharply.
Brennan scratched his head and screwed up his face.
"Well, to tell you the plain, honest truth, sir, I"m bothered if I know who to suspect. What gets over me is that white horse. No one believed the yarn about the buggy and pair of white horses, and no one believed the yarn about the men on white horses being seen on the Taloona road.
But here the chap comes clean through the township riding a horse of a colour that isn"t known in the district. You can"t put a white horse out of sight like you can a stray cat, sir. But where do they go when the Riders are not on the road? It gets me, sir, I"m free to admit."
"That hat I picked up was bought at the store in the town. That suggests someone who has been about the place."
"Well, he might have stolen it. He might have taken it from the bank, or Taloona, or it might have been that other poor chap"s--out there, I mean," he added, nodding towards the shed where Eustace lay.
"He"s no bushman," Durham said.
"He rides well enough for one."
"Oh, yes, I admit he rides well enough for one, but many men ride besides bushmen. I know neither he nor his partner have any practical bush experience. I know that. Just as I know the man who went through the town to-night is a burglar who learned his craft in one of the big cities of the world. The way that hotel door was opened was one of the finest pieces of expert burglary I"ve ever seen, and there are some pretty smart men at the game in our cities."
"He"s a pretty daring chap," Brennan remarked, with a touch of admiration in his voice.
"He"s too daring. That is what puzzles me. With fifty thousand pounds in gold and the valuables stolen from the bank, what sense is there in dashing through the place as he did to-night and then taking a bigger risk by doubling back past us and stealing what at the most can barely have been a hundred pounds in all?"
"Do you think he doubled back, sir? Don"t you think the dash through the town was a trick to draw everyone away so as to leave the way clear for a second man to do the burgling?"
"I don"t see who the second man could be. The handkerchief shows Eustace was the man who was with him at Taloona. I don"t think he has another man with him now. He is doing it single-handed and seems to be enjoying it, too."
"We ought to be able to pick up his tracks in the morning, if he doubled back."
"Yes, if those fools have not smothered them. I"ll see to that. I"ll be away with the dawn. Mind you, no one is to know."
"You can be sure of that, sir," Brennan answered.
CHAPTER XVI
LOVE"S CONQUEST
In the grey half light which is neither night nor day, Durham saddled his horse in the station yard.
No one was stirring in the township as he pa.s.sed slowly along the road, but lest there should happen to be anyone who might see him, he turned into the bush at the first opening he came to. Only then did he set his horse at a faster pace, riding direct for the range to pick up the track leading to the hidden pool.
The air was soft and cool, with filmy streaks of vapour floating amid the trees. As he cantered along, the mist rose and formed a pearly haze overhead into which there came a tinge of pink, dissipating it, before the colour could grow into a deeper tone, to reveal the clear sky, blue as a sapphire and bright with the first rays of the rising sun.