sun brings
quick response. Bud lifted his head, looked out over the hills to where
a bare plain stretched in the far distance, and went on more briskly.

He did not meet any one at all; but that was chiefly because he did not
want to meet any one. He went with his ears and his eyes alert, and was
not above hiding behind a clump of stunted bushes when two horsemen rode
down a canyon trail just below him. Also he searched for roads and then
avoided them. It would be a fat morsel for Marie and her mother to roll
under their tongues, he told himself savagely, if he were arrested and
appeared in the papers as one of that bunch of crooks!

Late that afternoon, by traveling steadily in one direction, he topped a
low ridge and saw an arm of the desert thrust out to meet him. A scooped
gully with gravelly sides and rocky bottom led down that way, and
because his feet were sore from so much sidehill travel, Bud went down.
He was pretty well fagged too, and ready to risk meeting men, if thereby
he might gain a square meal. Though he was not starving, or anywhere
near it, he craved warm food and hot coffee.

So when he presently came upon two sway-backed burros that showed the
sweaty imprint of packsaddles freshly removed, and a couple of horses
also sweat roughened, he straightway assumed that some one was making
camp not far away. One of the horses was hobbled, and they were all
eating hungrily the grass that grew along the gully's sides. Camp was
not only close, but had not yet reached suppertime, Bud guessed from the
well-known range signs.

Two or three minutes proved him right. He came upon a man just driving
the last tent peg. He straightened up and stared at Bud unblinkingly for
a few seconds.

"Howdy, howdy," he greeted him then with tentative friendliness, and
went on with his work. "You lost?" he added carefully. A man walking
down out of the barren hills, and carrying absolutely nothing in the
way of camp outfit, was enough to whet the curiosity of any one who knew
that country. At the same time curiosity that became too apparent
might be extremely unwelcome. So many things may drive a man into the
hills--but few of them would bear discussion with strangers.

"Yes. I am, and I ain't." Bud came up and stood with his hands in his
coat pockets, and watched the old fellow start his fire.

"Yeah--how about some supper? If you am, and you ain't as hungry as you
look--"

"I'll tell the world I am, and then some. I ai