We scattered, right and left, still galloping free and strong.
We did not return his fire, as I had told the others of my desire to take him alive.

We might have shot his horse; but the risk of hitting the rider, coupled with the confidence we felt of eventually hunting him to earth, restrained us.

It was the great mistake we made.
He had gained a little by his shots, but we soon caught it up.

Once more I said, "We are on him!" A minute later, we were pulled up short before an impenetrable thicket of prickly shrubs, through which I saw at once it would have been quite impossible to urge our staggering horses.
The other man, of course, reached it before us, with his mare's last breath.

He must have been making for it, indeed, of set purpose; for the second he arrived at the edge of the thicket he slipped off his tired pony, and seemed to dive into the bush as a swimmer dives off a rock into the water.
"We have him now!" I cried, in a voice of triumph.