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ten minutes. They would stop to feed, surely, or to look back and listen — in a strange country like this it was against horse-nature that they should wander far away at night unless they were thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had drunk their fill at the little pool helow the spring. They should be feeding now, or they should lie down and sleep, or stand up and sleep — anything but travel like this, deliberately away from camp.
Pink tried loping, but the ground was too treacherous and his horse too leg-weary to handle its feet properly in the dark. It stumbled several times, so he pulled down again to a fast walk. For a few minutes he did not hear the bell at all, and when he did it was not where he had expected to hear it, but away off to one side. So he had gained nothing save in anger and uneasiness.
There was no use going back to camp and rousing the boys, for he was now a mile or so away; and they would be afoot, since their custom was to keep but one horse saddled. When he went in to call the next guard he would be expected to bring that man's horse back with him, and would 197
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turn his own loose before he went to sleep. Certainly there was nothing to be gained by rousing the camp.
He did not suspect the trick being played upon him, though he did wonder if someone was leading the horses away. Still, in that case whoever did it would surely have sense enough to muffle the bell. Besides, it sounded exactly like a horse feeding and moving away at random — which, to those familiar with the sound, can never be mistaken for the tinkle of an animal traveling steadily to some definite point.
It was an extremely puzzled young man who rode and rode that night in pursuit of that evasive, nagging, altogether maddening tinkle. Always just over the next little rise he would hear it, or down in the next little draw; never close enough for him to discover the trick; never far enough away for him to give up the chase. The stars he had been watching in camp swam through the purple immensity above him and slid behind the skyline. Other stars as brilliant appeared and began their slow, swimming journey. Pink rode, and stopped to listen, and rode on again until it 198
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seemed to him that he must be dreaming some terribly realistic nightmare.
He was sitting on his horse on a lava-crusted ridge, straining bloodshot eyes into the mesa that stretched dimly before him, when dawn came streaking the sky with blood orange and purple and crimson. The stars were quenched in that flood of light; and Pink, looking now with clearer vision, saw that there was no living thing in sight save a coyote trotting home from his night's hunting. He turned short around and, getting his bearings from his memory of certain stars and from the sun that was peering at him from the top of a bare peak, and from that sense of direction which becomes second nature to a man who had lived long on the range, started for camp with his ill news.
CHAPTER XIY
ONE PUT OVEE ON THE BUNCH
' * £*1 OUNDS to me," volunteered the irrepres-k_J sible Big Medicine after a heavy silence, " like as if you'd gone to sleep on your hawse, Little One, and dreamed that there tinkle-tinkle stuff. By cripes, I'd like to see the bell-hawse that could walk away from me 'nless I was asleep an' dreamin' about it. Sounds like —"
" Sounds like Navvy work," Applehead put in, eyeing the surrounding rim of sun-gilded mesa, where little brown birds fluttered in short, swift flights and chirped with exasperating cheerfulness.
" If it was anybody, it was Ramon Chavez," Luck declared with the positiveness of his firm conviction. " By the tracks here, we're crowding up on him. And no man that's guilty of a crime, Applehead, is going to ride day after day without 200
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wanting to take a look over his shoulder to see if he's followed. He's probably seen us from some of these ridges — yesterday, most likely. And do you think he wouldn't know this bunch as far as he could see us, even without glasses ? The chances are he has them, though. He'd be a fool if he didn't stake himself to a pair."
" Say, by gracious," Andy observed somewhat irrelevantly, his eyes going over the group, " this would sure make great picture dope, wouldn't it ? Why didn't we bring Pete along, darn it ? Us all standing around here, plumb helpless because we're .afoot —"
" Aw, shut up! " snapped Pink, upon whom the burden of responsibility lay heavy. " I oughta be hung for laying around the fire here instead of being out there on guard! I oughta —
" It ain't your fault," Weary championed him warmly. " We all heard the bell —"
" Yes — and damn it, I heard the bell from then on till daylight! " Pink's lips quivered perceptibly with the mortification that burned within him. " If I'd been on guard —"
"Well, I calc'late you'd a been laid out now 201
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with a knife-cut in yah som'ers," Applehead stopped twisting his sunburnt mustache to say bluntly. " 'S a dang lucky thing fer you, young man, 't you wasn't on guard, V the only thing't looks queer to me is that you wasn't potted las' night when yuh got out away from here. Musta been only one of 'em stayed behind, an' he had t' keep out in front uh yuh t' tinkle that dang bell. Figgered on wearin' out yer hoss, I reckon, 'n r didn't skurcely dare t' take the risk uh killin' you off 'nless they was a bunch around t' handle us." His bright blue eyes with their range squint went from one to another with a certain speculative pride in the glance. " 'N' they shore want t' bring a crowd along when they tie into this yere outfit, now I'm tellin' yuh! "
Lite Avery, who had gone prowling down the draw by himself, came back to camp, tilting stiff-leggedly along in his high-heeled boots and betraying, in every step he took, just how handicapped a cowpuncher is when set afoot upon the range and forced to walk where he has always been accustomed to ride. He stopped to give Pink's exhausted horse a sympathetic pat on the shoulder,
ONE PUT OVER ON THE BUNCH
and came on, grinning a little with the corners of his mouth tipped down.
" Here's what's left of the hobbles the buckskin wore," he said, holding up the cut loops of a figure-eight rope hobble. "KInda speaks for it-, self, don't it ? "
They crowded around to inspect this plain evidence of stealing. Afterwards they stood hard-eyed and with a flush on their cheek-bones, considering what was the best and wisest way to meet this emergency. As to hunting afoot for their horses, the chance of success was almost too small to be considered at all. Pink's horse was not fit for further travel until he had rested. There was one pair of field glasses — and there were nine irate men to whom inaction was intolerable.
" One thing we can do, if we have to," Luck said at last, with the fighting look in his face which moving-picture people had cause to remember. " We can help ourselves to any horses we run across. Applehead, how's the best way to go about it?"
Applehead, thus pushed into leadership, chewed his mustache and eyed the mesa sourly. " Well,, 203
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aeein' they've set us afoot, I calc'late we're jest about entitled to any dang thing we run across that's ridable," he acceded. " ']$P the way I'd do, would be to git on high groun' with them glasses 'n' look fer bosses. '£P then head fer 'em 'n' round 'em up afoot 'n' rope out what we want. They's enough of us t' mebby git a mount apiece, but it shore ain't goin' t' be no snap, now I'm tellin' ye. 'W if yuh do that," he added, " yuh want t' leave a man er two in camp —'n' they want to keep their dang eyes peeled, lemme tell yuh! Ef we was t' find ourselves afoot an' our grub 'n' outfit stole —"
" We won't give them that chance at us." Luck was searching with his eyes for the nearest high point that was yet not too far from camp. " I think I'll just take Andy up on that pinnacle there, and camp down by that pile of boulders. The rest of you stay around camp and rest yourselves while you've got the chance. In a couple of hours, Applehead, you and Lite come up and take our place; then Miguel and Bud, and after that Weary and Happy. Pink, you go and bed down in the shade somewhere and go to sleep — and quit 204