And into the yellow highway Dad guided the fleeing roan. As he did so he rose in his stirrups and peered forward, the sharp, old eyes scanning the broad ribbon of road for a full three miles ahead. The next moment he had brought his horse to a mercilessly quick and sliding standstill that well-nigh threw the gallant beast off balance. Directly in front hung a dust-cloud seemingly no larger than a man’s hand. CHAPTER XI DEVIL AND DEEP SEA The campaigner instinct told Dad what raised so odd a cloud on the dry dust of the road. From its position and formation, he knew it hung above a cavalry column of considerable size. A glance at the road at his feet showed him that no such large body of horsemen had passed during the past two hours. The column, then, was coming toward him. And between him and it lay no crossroad. There was but one possible move for him; for already the hoof-beats of the four guerrillas’ horses were growing louder. Dad wheeled his horse and rode back at a dead gallop along the main road he had just entered. Past the byway’s mouth he sped and straight on. The guerrillas, still on the byway, noted the maneuver and, with a quadruple yell, struck out across the intervening field to cut him off. And for a brief space their action favored the refugee. For the field they entered was newly and deeply plowed. Moreover, through its center, in a depression, was a bit of boggy ground almost worthy the name of quagmire. The horses lumbered heavily over the plowed ground and sank almost to their knees when they came to the strip of mire. The roan, meantime, tore along the hard, yellow highway with undiminished speed. One of the guerrillas whipped out a pistol and fired thrice in quick succession. A bullet whined querulously past Dad’s head. A second caught him fairly in the bridle arm. The shot was fired at longest pistol-range, and its force was almost spent before it reached its mark. Yet it bit its way through the uniform coat and the shirt-sleeve, and inflicted a light flesh-wound in the forearm. The shock of the blow knocked the rein from Dad’s left hand and numbed his left arm to the shoulder. At the jerk on the bit the great roan swerved sharply in surprise. Dad caught the loose-flung rein in his right hand and guided the terrified horse back into the road’s center. As he did so a chinkapin and live-oak forest shut him off from the view of the floundering guerrillas. “They never knew I was hit,” he growled. “That’s one comfort.” He glanced down at his left arm. Already an inordinately large patch of blood was discoloring the blue uniform on either side of the bullet hole. “Must have tapped a big vein or maybe an artery,” he conjectured, as he saw the blood trickle fast from the edge of his cuff. “At this rate, I’ll be too weak in a few minutes to sit in the saddle. I’ll have to stop somewhere to stanch it.”