Let's go. Sooner we're off this
here trail the better."

Without further delay they rode on down the slope, paused for a moment or
two at the spring in the hollow to water the horses, and then pushed on
again. Passing the entrance to the gulch, Jessup glanced that way
curiously.

"Mebbe they're on their way to dispose of yore corpse, Buck," he
chuckled.

Stratton grinned. "I thought of that, and I rather hope it's so. They'd be
puzzled and suspicious, maybe, but they couldn't be really sure of
anything. It would be a whole lot better than to have them run across our
tracks in the sand back there. That would give away the show completely."

Twenty minutes or so later they reached the gully through which they had
come out on the trail. Though there had been no further signs of the
Shoe-Bar men, their vigilance did not relax. Pushing on with all possible
speed, they covered the distance to the little camp in very much less time
than it had taken in the morning.

Here the horses had a brief rest while the two men collected their few
belongings and loaded them on the pack-horse, for they had decided to go
on at once. Both felt that no time should be lost in finding the sheriff
and setting the machinery of the law in motion. Moreover, they were down
to the last scrap of food and unless they stirred themselves they were
likely to go hungry that night.

An hour later found them riding southward, following the route through the
mountains used by the cattle-rustlers. Making the same cautious circuit
Buck had taken around the southern end of the Shoe-Bar, they reached
Rocking-R land without adventure and pulled up before the door of Red
Butte camp about six o'clock.

Gabby Smith was cooking supper and greeted them with his customary lack of
enthusiasm. Bud, who had never seen him before, was much diverted by his
manner, and during the meal kept up a constant chatter of comment and
question for the purpose, as he afterward confessed, of making the
taciturn puncher go the limit in the matter of loquacity. His effort,
though it could scarcely be termed successful, evidently got on Gabby's
nerves, for afterward he turned both men out of the cabin while he
cleared up, a process lasting until nearly bedtime.

It was not until then that Stratton, by a chance remark, learned that
three or four days after his departure from the camp two weeks earlier, a
stranger had been there making inquiries about him. Gabby's stenographic
brev