After a while he became suspicious, apparently, having heard the pursuers, and dropped a scout back as a rear guard; thus forcing Buffalo Bill and his companions to halt. When this rear guard went on again, he rode rapidly for some rendezvous, failing to rejoin Black John; and soon the scouts were bewildered in the darkness, and almost lost the trail. For a time after that they sat still on their horses, trying to hear some sound indicating the direction of Black John’s retreat. Unable to do this, they were forced to begin a search for hoofprints; but they lost time in picking up the trail, and when it was found they could not follow it rapidly. They held to it, however, with much pertinacity, though falling rapidly behind the road agents. When morning came, after an all-night ride, that, in their experience, had few equals in weariness, they were still on the trail, but miles behind. They ignored their weariness, when they saw the trail stretching straight on before them, and pressed their horses into a swift gallop, after a brief stop for water and grazing, and for food for themselves. “Buffler,” said Nomad, as they started on, “we hangs to this hyar trail till ther last hoss is dead!” CHAPTER XLI. THE OUTLAWS TRICKED. Black John had got rid of all but six of his men, one of those remaining being Toby Sam. The others he had dispatched on various missions, and in that manner he meant to dispose of them all, one by one. His horses were nearly exhausted now; he had ridden hard through the night, and all through the hours of the forenoon, and the previous day the horses had little rest. Lena Forest was almost in a state of collapse, from exhaustion; and Bruce Clayton was not in much better state. His hands being tied together, and his feet tied under the belly of his horse, so cramped him that at times he suffered not only from fatigue, but such intense pain that it was torture. Little Black John cared for these things. He had an iron frame that resisted fatigue, and his men were as hardened to such things as himself. But the exhausted horses had reached a point where their speed was little better than a walk, and soon they would be unable to go on. Even Black John had a mental vision of pursuers hot on his trail. At this juncture, it seemed to him a godsend, when he beheld a number of horses grazing in a little valley, through which ran the trail he was following. “Mustangs!” he said. “What luck!” He and his companions drew rein and looked down at the horses. More than a dozen in number, with heads down, not apparently having seen the horsemen, they presented a tempting sight to the eyes of Black John and his comrades.