doesn't seem to have been with him."

"Oh, Pounds, he was making coffee, somewheres in yonder, when this
happened. Neither of them guessed there'd be other hawsses wandering
here in the night, or they both would have come." He turned back to our
pack animals.

"Then you'll not hunt for this camp to make sure?"

"I prefer making sure first. We might be expected at that camp."

He took out his rifle from beneath his leg and set it across his saddle
at half-cock. I did the same; and thus cautiously we resumed our journey
in a slightly different direction. "This ain't all we're going to find
out," said the Virginian. "Ounces had a good idea; but I reckon he made
a bad mistake later."

We had found out a good deal without any more, I thought. Ounces had
gone to bring in their single horse, and coming upon three more in the
pasture had undertaken to catch one and failed, merely driving them
where he feared to follow.

"Shorty never could rope a horse alone," I remarked.

The Virginian grinned. "Shorty? Well, Shorty sounds as well as Ounces.
But that ain't the mistake I'm thinking he made."

I knew that he would not tell me, but that was just like him. For the
last twenty minutes, having something to do, he had become himself
again, had come to earth from that unsafe country of the brain where
beckoned a spectral Steve. Nothing was left but in his eyes that
question which pain had set there; and I wondered if his friend of old,
who seemed so brave and amiable, would have dealt him that hurt at the
solemn end had he known what a poisoned wound it would be.

We came out on a ridge from which we could look down. "You always want
to ride on high places when there's folks around whose intentions ain't
been declared," said the Virginian. And we went along our ridge for some
distance. Then, suddenly he turned down and guided us almost at once to
the trail. "That's it," he said. "See."

The track of a horse was very fresh on the trail. But it was a galloping
horse now, and no bootprints were keeping up with it any more. No boots
could have kept up with it. The rider was making time to-day. Yesterday
that horse had been ridden up into the mountains at leisure. Who was on
him? There was never to be any certain answer to that. But who was not
on him? We turned back in our journey, back into the heart of that basin
with the tall peaks all rising like teeth in the cloudless sun, and the
snow-fields shining white.

"He was afra