And from the side where stood the white men came the vicious sound of a pistol shot.
"Slack, Surry!" Jack, on the ground, glimpsed the purpling face of his foe.

"Slack, you devil!" Near sixty feet he had to run--and Jose was strangling before his eyes; strangling, because Surry's instant obedience was offset by Jose's horse, who, facing the other at the first jerk of the riata, backed involuntarily with the pull of the pinioned reins.

The Spanish bit was cutting his mouth cruelly, and Jose's frenzied clawing could not ease the cruel strain upon either of them.
A few terrible seconds, and then Jack overtook them, eaught the horse by the bridle, and stopped him; and the blood which the cruel bit had brought when the spade cut deep, stained Jack's white clothes red where it fell.
"Slack, Surry! Come on!" he cried, his voice harsh with the stress of that moment.

And when the rawhide hung loose between the two horses he freed Jose of the deadly noose, and saw where it had burnt raw the skin of his neck on the side where it touched.

A snaky, six-strand riata can be a rather terrible weapon, he decided, while he loosed it and flung it from him.
Jose, for the first time getting breath enough to gasp, tried to straighten himself in the saddle; lurched, and would have gone off on his head if Jack had not put up a hand to steady him.