ded for
the shot and their breaths hung on each flying leap that brought the
rider nearer his last chance. The sixth target was separated by barely
fifty yards from the fifth. Laramie had covered half the distance when
he completely reversed his form. He stretched gradually up in the
saddle and riding close in on the target itself, rose to his full
height in the stirrups and smashed his fifth shot almost straight down
on it; the potato split into a dozen fragments. Bill Bradley at the
sixth was watching for Sawdy; his hat sailed twenty feet in the air.
The yelling crowd rode Laramie down as he galloped in a long circle
back, his lines swung on his forearm, while he slipped four fresh
cartridges into the warm cylinder of his revolver.

He dismounted to ease his cinches. "I guess I over-did it," he
explained to the friends that crowded closest. "I got the cinches a
little tight. The pony didn't like it. I couldn't get the gait in
time for the Number Five. But I knew I could make Number Six."

Remounting, he made his way through the crowd back over the course.
Kate was still on the hill. "You won, didn't you?" she cried as he
rode toward her.

"If I hadn't, I guess I'd have had to head straight across the creek
for home. Could you see?"

"I watched you the whole way. What a long arm you have."

"While these tin horns are counting their money, would you like to show
me the ponies?"

"You have a long memory, too."

"I was brought up a good deal with Indians. Shall I hunt up Van Horn
to go with us?"

She darted a quick glance at him: "Why, yes, surely," she retorted, "if
you want him."

Laramie was tearing out a cigarette paper: "I could look at them
without him," he returned calmly.

"I don't see him, anyway," murmured Kate, professing to sweep the
crowded course with her eyes.

"Don't look too hard," cautioned Laramie.

"I suppose we might save time," she suggested, ignoring his last
remark, "by going without him."

CHAPTER XIV

LEFEVER ASKS QUESTIONS

Those closest to headquarters sometimes know least of what is going on.
That the big celebration at the ranch could have been anything more or
less than what it professed to be, did not occur to Kate; nor could
anyone actually say that it was more or less. Hawk could
contemptuously refuse its overtures; Laramie could for reasons of his
own accept them; the Falling Wall rustlers were out for a good time or
they would not have been rust