had disappeared. The agent had been
gone an hour when the trail of the outlaws brought him to the knoll.
From the top of it Philip looked over the prairie to the North.

A horseman was galloping toward him. He knew that it was Billinger, and
stood up in his stirrups so that the other would see him. Half a mile
away the agent stopped and Philip could see him signaling frantically
with both arms. Five minutes later Philip rode up to him. Billinger's
horse was half-winded, and in Billinger's face there were tense lines of
excitement.

"There's some one out on the prairie," he called, as Philip reined in.
"I couldn't make out a horse, but there's a man in the trail beyond the
second ridge. I believe they've stopped to water their horses and feed
at a little lake just this side of the rough country."

Billinger had loosened his carbine, and was examining the breech. He
glanced anxiously at Philip's empty saddle-straps.

"It'll be long-range shooting, if they've got guns," he said. "Sorry I
couldn't find a gun for you."

Philip drew one of his two long-barreled service revolvers and set his
lips in a grim and reassuring smile as he followed the bobbing head of a
coyote some distance away.

"We're not considered proficient in the service unless we can make use
of these things at two hundred yards, Billinger," he replied, replacing
the weapon in its holster. "If it's a running fight I'd rather have 'em
than a carbine. If it isn't a running fight we'll come in close."

Philip looked at the agent as they galloped side by side through the
long grass, and Billinger looked at him. In the face of each there was
something which gave the other assurance. For the first time it struck
Philip that his companion was something more than an operator at Bleak
House Station. He was a fighter. He was a man of the stamp needed down
at Headquarters, and he was bound to tell him so before this affair was
over. He was thinking of it when they came to the second ridge.

Five miles to the north and west loomed the black line of the Bad Lands.
To a tenderfoot they would not have appeared to be more than a mile
distant. Midway in the prairie between there toiled a human figure.
Even at that distance Philip and Billinger could see that it was moving,
though with a slowness that puzzled them. For several minutes they stood
breathing their horses, their eyes glued on the object ahead of them.
Twice in a space of a hundred yards it seemed to stumbl