cookin' at Little Lost--"

Bud lifted his head and looked at Eddie like a man newly awakened. "I
gave her money to take home for me, to my mother, down Laramie way. I
begged her to go if she was liable to be in trouble over leaving the
ranch. But she said she wouldn't go--not unless she was missed. She knew
I'd come back to the ranch. I just piled her hands full of bills in the
dark and told her to use them if she had to--"

"She might have done it," Jerry hazarded hopefully. "Maybe she did sneak
in some other way and get her things. She'd have to take some clothes
along. Women folks always have to pack. By gosh, she could hide Boise
out somewhere and--"

For a young man in danger of being lynched by his boss for horse
stealing and waylaid and robbed by a gang notorious in the country,
Bud's appetite for risk seemed insatiable that morning. For he added the
extreme possibility of breaking his neck by reckless riding in the next
hour.

He swung Sunfish about and jabbed him with the spurs, ducking into the
gloom of the Gap as if the two who rode behind were assassins on his
trail. Once he spoke, and that was to Sunfish. His tone was savage.

"Damn your lazy hide, you've been through here twice and you've got
daylight to help--now pick up your feet and travel!"

Sunfish travelled; and the pace he set sent even Jerry gasping now and
then when he came to the worst places, with the sound of galloping hoofs
in the distance before him, and Eddie coming along behind and lifting
his voice warningly now and then. Even the Catrockers had held the Gap
in respect, and had ridden its devious trail cautiously. But caution was
a meaningless word to Bud just then while a small flame of hope burned
steadily before him.

The last turn, where on the first trip Sunfish lost Boise and balked for
a minute, he made so fast that Sunfish left a patch of yellowish hair
on a pointed rock and came into the open snorting fire of wrath. He went
over the rough ground like a bouncing antelope, simply because he was
too mad to care how many legs he broke. At the peak of rocks he showed
an inclination to stop, and Bud, who had been thinking and planning
while he hoped, pulled him to a stand and waited for the others to come
up. They could not go nearer the corrals without incurring the danger of
being overheard, and that must not happen.

"You damn fool," gritted Jerry when he came up with Bud. "If I'd knowed
you wanted to commit suicide I'd a c