t's the old buck?"

Rennie nodded. "He's wiser 'n we are; also closer to 'em. He's playin' a
lone hand, so he has to wait his chance at Blake. He figgers Angus will
be after Blake, and as he may run into bad luck himself he wants to make
sure somebody lands him. He don't know why the other boys are there, but
he knows there must be some good reason, because they're in a hurry and
tryin' to hide their trail. So on gen'ral principles he blazes that
cottonwood where he strikes their tracks where they've turned off, and
keeps goin'."

"Uh-huh!" Bush agreed. "I guess we better not tell them Mackay boys
about the Injun. They'd be for crowdin' things, and likely mess 'em up.
They don't want nobody to get ahead of 'em. I wish I hadn't told 'em
what old Braden said. But it seemed right they should know."

"So it is right," said Rennie. "Adam Mackay hadn't no gun. She was
murder. Only thing, I don't savvy it bein' Gavin French. Givin' the
devil his due, he's all _man_. And Braden was such a darn liar. Well,
there's many a card lost in the shuffle turns up in the deal."

CHAPTER XLIV

THE RED AVENGER

Many miles beyond the head waters of Copper Creek four men rode along
the crest of a sparsely timbered summit. Their horses were weary,
gaunted with scant, frost-burnt feed. The riders were unkempt, unshaven,
their eyes reddened by much staring into distances and the ceaseless
pour of the mountain winds. The wind was now blowing strongly. It was
very cold, and they bent against it, their hats pulled low, their
collars high. Along the summit on which they rode and even along its
flanks lay thin snow, the first of the coming winter. But above, on the
higher ranges, it lay thickly white on the peaks and in the great
gulches, promise of the twenty or thirty or forty feet of it which would
fall before Spring, as it had fallen on that high roof of the world for
ages.

On the second day on the Copper the fugitives had discovered that they
had not shaken off pursuit. It clung to them doggedly, tenaciously. Once
through binoculars they had seen their pursuers across the width of a
mountain valley. Little figures, seven of them, had ridden across the
field of the lens focused on a barren patch of hillside. They could make
a very fair guess at the identity of some of the men. With the discovery
they had made extra speed.

Then they had got off the trail, which was ancient, faint, overgrown.
Left to himself Gavin, who was the p