the whole distance from the mine, and where was Chino?

There was but one answer: back there along the trail somewhere, at some
point by which Lockwood had galloped headlong and unheeding, lying up
there in the chaparral with Reno's bullets in his body.

There was no time now to go on to the Hill. Chino, if he was not past
help, needed it without an instant's loss of time. Lockwood spun the
horse about. Once more the ford, once more the canon slopes, once more
the sharp turn by Cold Canon, once more the thick darkness under the
redwoods. Steadily he galloped on, searching the roadside.

Then all at once he reined in sharply, bringing the horse to a
standstill, one ear turned down the wind. The night's silence was broken
by a multitude of sounds--the laboured breathing of the spent bronco,
the saddle creaking as the dripping flanks rose and fell, the touch of
wind in the tree-tops and the chorusing of the myriad tree-toads. But
through all these, distinct, as precise as a clock-tick, Lockwood had
heard, and yet distinguished, the click of a horse's hoof drawing near,
and the horse was at a gallop: Reno at last.

Lockwood drew his pistol. He stood in thick shadow. Only some twenty
yards in front of him was there any faintest break in the darkness; but
at that point the blurred moonlight made a grayness across the trail,
just a tone less deep than the redwoods' shadows.

With his revolver cocked and trained upon this patch of grayness,
Lockwood waited, holding his breath.

The gallop came blundering on, sounding in the night's silence as loud