to git blowed out of my saddle by somebody in the brush,
just waitin' for me to ride up and git shot. I got the way he's headed,
and by to-morrow mornin' I'll know for sure.

"If he'd been goin' to swing back, to fool me, he'd 'a' done it before
he hit the timber, up yonder. Once he gits in them hills he'll head
straight south, for they ain't no other trail to ride on them ridges.
But mebby he cut along the foothills, first. I got to make sure."

Late that afternoon and close to the edge of the foothills, Cheyenne
lost the tracks. He spent over an hour finding them again. Bartley could
discern nothing definite, even when Cheyenne pointed to a queer, blurred
patch in some loose earth.

"It looks like the imprint of some coarse cloth," said Bartley.

"Gunnysack. They pulled the shoes off my hosses and sacked their feet."

"How about their own horses?"

"They been ridin' hard ground, and the tracks don't show, plain.
Panhandle figured, when I seen that only the tracks of three horses
showed, I'd think he had turned my hosses loose on the big mesa. He
stops, pulls their shoes, sacks their feet, and leads 'em over there.
Whoever done it was afoot, and steppin' careful. Hell, I could learn
that yella-bellied hoss-thief how to steal hosses right, if I was in the
business."

"Looks like a pretty stiff drill up those hills," remarked Bartley.

"That's why he turned, right here. 'Tain't just the stealin' of my
hosses that's interestin' him. He's takin' trouble to run a whizzer on
me--get me guessin'. Here is where we quit trailin' him. I got my plan
workin' like a hen draggin' fence rails. We ain't goin' to trail
Panhandle. We're goin' to ride 'round and meet him."

"Not a bad idea," said Bartley.

"It won't be--if I see him first."

CHAPTER XII

JIMMY AND THE LUGER GUN

Two days of riding toward the west, along the edge of the hills, and
Bartley and Cheyenne found themselves approaching the high country. The
trail ran up a wide valley, on either side of which were occasional
ranches reaching back toward the slopes. In reality they were gradually
climbing the range on an easy grade and making good time.

Their course now paralleled the theoretical course of Panhandle and his
fellows. Dodging the rugged land to the south, Cheyenne had swung round
in a half-circle, hoping to head off Panhandle on the desert side of the
range. Since abandoning the tracks of the stolen horses, Cheyenne had
resumed his ol