Szilard then had practical experience of the rumor
that Fatia Negra could throw very well even with his left hand,--had he
not leaped aside at the nick of time the pistols would have dashed his
brains out.
Then up Fatia Negra started to his feet again and fled away still
further. The pursuer and the pursued now sped along with pretty equal
energy, though the loss of blood continued to weaken the robber. Yet he
made one desperate effort to scale the steep side of the mountain. An
ordinary man could rarely breast such an ascent, yet he tried it. But he
soon found that even thus he could not shake off his enemy. He remained
indeed some hundreds of paces behind but he could not dodge out of his
sight in the now open glade.
On the brow of the hill the adventurer stopped to pant and surveyed the
undulating thickly wooded hills stretching away on every side of him.
He drew a silver whistle from his bosom and gave with it three
penetrating signals which re-echoed from among the distant mountains.
But it was only an echo, only the note of the whistle that he heard, he
waited in vain for anything else. All his accomplices had evidently
hidden away.
And again the pursuer overtook him. He waited till he was only two paces
off and then he seized a stone weighing half a hundred weight and hurled
it at him--the tree trunk behind which Szilard had taken refuge bent
beneath the blow.
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