th a blanket roll and a sack with lumpy things tied in the
bottom. He wore chaps, his spurs, carried a yellow slicker over his
arm. On his head was a black Stetson, one of Tom's discarded old
hats.

He led Coaley from the box stall where he had never before seen him
stand, saddled him, tied his bundles compactly behind the cantle,
mounted and rode down the trail, following the hoof prints that showed
freshest in the loose, gravelly sand. Coaley, plainly glad to be out
of his prison, stepped daintily along in a rocking half trot that
would carry him more miles in a day than any other horse in the
country could cover, and bring him to the journey's end with springy
gait and head held proudly, ears twitching, ready for more miles if
his rider wanted more.

The tracks led up the road to the Ridge, turned sharply off where the
brush grew scanty among the flat rocks that just showed their faces
above the surface of the arid soil. Lance frowned and followed. For a
long way he skirted the rim rock that edged the sheer bluff. A scant
furlong away, on his right, a trail ran west to the broken land of
Indian Creek. But since the horsemen had chosen to keep to the rocky
ground along the rim, Lance followed.

He had gone perhaps a mile along the bluff when Coaley began to toss
up his head and perk his ears backward, turning now and then to look.
Lance was sunk too deep in bitter introspection to observe these first
warning movements which every horseman knows. He was thinking of Mary
Hope, who would be waking now to a day of sorrowful excitement.
Thinking, too, of old Aleck Douglas and the things that he had said in
his raving.

What Douglas had shouted hoarsely was not true, of course. He did not
believe,--and yet, there was Shorty's enigmatical answer to a simple
question; there was Sam Pretty Cow, implying much while he actually
said very little; there was this unheralded departure of all the
Devil's Tooth riders in the night, in the season between round-ups.
There was Coaley feeling fit for anything, shut up in the box stall
while Tom rode another horse; and here was Lance himself taking the
trail of the Devil's Tooth outfit at a little after sunrise on a horse
tacitly forbidden to all riders save Tom.

Coaley, in a place where he must pick his way between boulders, paused
and lifted his head, staring back the way they had come. Lance roused
himself from gloomy speculations and looked back also, but he could
not see anyth