girl, which means filled with curiosity."
A disdainful shoulder gave him his answer. The door was unlocked, after
immemorial Western custom, and Judith opened it. Lee heard her little
gasp of pure delight.
"He's a dear, the man who lives here!" she announced positively. "You
can just tell by looking at his home."
Looking in over her shoulder, Bud Lee wondered just what in his one-room
shanty had caught her enthusiasm. He was secretly pleased that it had
done so, though that "it" was somewhat vague in his masculine mind.
There was the rock fireplace with an iron hook protruding from each side
for coffee-pot and stew-pot; a bunk with a blanket smoothed over
cedar-boughs; a shelf with a dozen books; little else, so far as he could
see or remember, to catch at Judith's delight. Yet she, looking through
woman's eyes, read in one quick "peek" the character of the dweller in
this abode. One who was content with little, who loved a clean, outdoor
life, and who was tranquilly above the pettiness of humanity. Judith
closed the door softly.
"I'd like to look inside his books!" she confessed. "But I won't."
The lean horse foreman chuckled. Judith sniffed at him.
"You haven't any curiosity about such things as books," she retorted.
"To be sure, why should you have?"
Again, leaving the cabin, she went before him. Going straight across the
plateau, she showed him where one could clamber up a steep way to the
ridge. Once up there, it was but ten minutes until, in a hollow, they
found the monument marking a trail, a stone set upon a boulder.
It was after five o'clock. When, following the trail back and forth in
its winding along the side of the ridge, they found the signs they
sought, it was fast growing dark. But there, in a narrow defile where
loose soil had filtered down, were tracks left by a large boot. Lee went
down on his hands and knees to study them in the dusk. He got up with a
little grunt and moved down the trail. Again he found tracks, this time
more clearly defined. So dark was it now that they had lighted several
matches.
"Two men," he announced wonderingly. "Fresh tracks, too. Made this
morning or last night, I'll bet. One coming east from Indian Head. The
other coming west from the plateau behind us. Who's _he_? Where'd he
come from?"
"He's the second of the two men who shot at you," said Judith quickly.
"Don't I know every trail in this neck of the woods, Bud Lee? He
follow
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