ed.

They climbed out of the valley to the rim. The short man was bringing up
the rear along the narrow trail-ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look
back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because of the
power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to
scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley.

Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue. Was that
or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill?

"Cayn't be our camp-fire," the squat man said aloud. "I smothered that
proper."

"Them's clouds," pronounced Doble quickly. "Clouds an' some mist risin'
from the gulch."

"I reckon," agreed the other, with no sure conviction. Doble must be
right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the
camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had
cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like
smoke. He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire
in the chaparral now might do untold damage.

Shorty looked at Doble. "If tha's fire, Dug--"

"It ain't. No chance," snapped the ex-foreman. "We'll travel if you don't
feel called on to go back an' stomp out the mist, Shorty," he added with
sarcasm.

The cowpuncher took the trail again. Like many men, he was not proof
against a sneer. Dug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not
want to make a fool of himself. Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all
day.

An hour later they rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay
Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long,
bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It
was the bed of the new road already spiked with shining rails.

"I'm goin' to town," announced Doble.

Shorty looked at him in surprise. "Wanta see yore picture, I reckon. It's
on a heap of telegraph poles, I been told," he said, grinning.

"To-day," went on the ex-foreman stubbornly.

"Big, raw-boned guy, hook nose, leather face, never took no prize as a
lady's man, a wildcat in a rough-house, an' sudden death on the draw,"
extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward
poster.

"I'll lie in the chaparral till night an' ride in after dark."

With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea. He was
hungry for the fleshpots of Malapi. If they dropped in late at night,
stayed a few hours, and kept under cover, they co