The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon and sky, dropped a thick veil on the high road and the silent streets of Indian Spring.

As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through the obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.
"Some one ahead!" The two men bent forward over the dashboard.

Above the steady plunging of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of other hoofs in the darkness before them.
"It's that horse thief!" said Dunn, in a savage whisper.

"Bear to the right, and hand me the whip." A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at each stroke, broke into a wild canter.

The frail vehicle swayed from side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts.