o catch a fresh horse from the pasture, tie his
own horse in a secluded place until his return, and re-saddle it to ride
back to the ranch, careful not to moisten a hair. He felt a certain
contempt for the stupidity that would leave such evidence as Jake, but
for all that he was worried. Being the scoundrel he was, he jumped to the
conclusion that some one had been spying on him. It was a mystery that
bred watchfulness and much cogitation.

"What's that about some geeser riding Jake las' night?" Bud, riding
slowly until Bill overtook him, asked curiously, with the freedom of
close friendship. "Tex was saying something about it to Curley when
they rode past me, but I didn't ketch it all. Anything in it?"

Bill cleared his mind again with blistering epithets before he answered
Bud directly. "Jake was rode, and he was rode hard. It was a cool
night--and I know what it takes to put that hawse in a lather. I wisht
I'd a got to feel a few saddle blankets this morning! The--" Bill cussed
himself out of breath.

When he stopped, Bud took up the refrain. It was not his horse, of
course, but an unwritten law of the range had been broken, and that was
any honest rider's affair. Besides, Bill was a pal of Bud's. "Hangin''s
too good for 'im, whoever done it," he finished vindictively. "I'd lay
low, if I was you, Bill. Mebby he'll git into the habit, and you kin
ketch 'im at it."

"I aim to lay low, all right. And I aim to come up a-shootin' if the--"

"Yore dead right, Bill. Night-ridin' 's bad enough when a feller rides
his own hawse. It'd need some darn smooth explainin' then. But when a man
takes an' saddles up another feller's hawse--"

"I kin see his objeck in that," Bill said. "He had a long trail to
foller, an' he tuk the hawse that'd git 'im there and back the quickest.
Now what I'd admire to know is, who was the rider, an' where was he goin'
to? D' you happen to miss anybody las' night, Bud?"

"Me? Thunder! Bill, you know damn well I wouldn't miss my own beddin'
roll if it was drug out from under me!"

"Same here," mourned Bill. "Ridin' bronks shore does make a feller ready
for the hay. Me, I died soon as my head hit my piller."

"Mary V, she musta hit out plumb early this morning," Bud observed
gropingly. "She was saddled and gone when I come to the c'rel at sun-up.
Yuh might ast her if she seen anybody, Bill. Chances is she wouldn't, but
they's no harm askin'."

"I will," Bill said sourly. "Any devilment that's