.

"Little Lost." Without intending to do so, Bud put a good deal of
meaning in his voice.

Eddie did not say anything, but veered to the right, climbing higher
on the slope than Bud would have gone. "We can take the high trail," he
volunteered when they stopped to rest the horses. "It takes up over the
summit and down Burroback Valley. It's longer, but the stage road
edges along the Sinks and--it might be rough going, after we get down a
piece."

"How about the side-hill trail, through Catrock Peak?"

Eddie turned sharply. In the starlight Bud was watching him, wondering
what he was thinking.

"How'd you get next to any side-hill trail?" Eddie asked after a minute.
"You been over it?"

"I surely have. And I expect to go again, to-nigh! A young fellow about
your size is going to act a pilot, and get me to Little Lost as quick as
possible. It'll be daylight at that."

"If you got another day coming, it better be before daylight we get
there," Eddie retorted glumly. H hesitated, turned his horse and led the
way down the slope, angling down away from the well-travelled trail over
the summit of Gold Gap.

That hesitation told Bud, without words, how tenuous was his hold
upon Eddie. He possessed sufficient imagination to know that his own
carefully discipline past, sheltered from actual contact with evil, had
given him little enough by which to measure the soul of a youth like
Eddie Collier.

How long Eddie had supped and slept with thieves and murderers, Bud
could only guess. From the little that Marian had told him, Eddie's
father had been one of the gang. At least, she had plainly stated that
he and Lew had been partners--though Collier might have been ranching
innocently enough, and ignorant of Lew's real nature.

At all events, Eddie was a lad well schooled in inequity such as the
wilderness fosters in sturdy fashion. Wide spaces give room for great
virtues and great wickedness. Bud felt that he was betting large odds on
an unknown quantity. He was placing himself literally in the hands of an
acknowledged Catrocker, because of the clean gaze of a pair of eyes, the
fine curve of the mouth.

For a long time they rode without speech. Eddie in the lead, Bud
following, alert to every little movement in the sage, every little
sound of the night. That was what we rather naively call "second
nature", habit born of Bud's growing years amongst dangers which every
pioneer family knows. Alert he was, yet deeply dream