is shrunken figure with a wild gray
beard, watery, bloodshot eyes, a matted thatch of hair on which a
broken-rimmed hat perched, ragged and filthy clothing ...

"Not gonna haul th' Mex much farther, you ain't!" observed this scarecrow
with a touch of relish in the relaying of bad news. "He's outta his head
now, gonna be clean outta his skin come sundown."

"All right!" said Kitchell. "We'll camp here ... in that shade." His
gesture indicated some point beyond Drew's range of vision.

"They're gonna be sniffin' 'long right behind us," the sergeant said
dubiously.

"You're forgettin' we've got us sonny boy here!" Shannon loomed over Drew.
"He'll buy us out."

"Maybe from Rennie--not from them Yankee troopers."

"I told you"--Shannon lost his grin--"th' Yanks ain't gonna come all th' way
down here! There's too much pointin' in th' other direction. That is, if
you was as good as you said you was, Lutterfield!"

The old man grinned in turn, widely set yellow tooth stubs showing ragged.
"Ain't never failed you yet, boy. Old Amos Lutterfield, he's got him those
wot believe wot he says like it was Holy Writ--he sure has! Them
troopers'll go poundin' down th' Sonora road huntin' wot never was, till
they drop men an' hosses all along. Then Nahata an' his bucks'll tickle
'em up a bit--an' they'll forgit there was anyone else t' hunt."

Drew lay in the position where they had dumped him, his hands still tied,
the ropes on his ankles now knotted together. Had the season been high
summer they would have baked in this rock slit, but it was still
uncomfortably warm. He heard a low moaning and saw Kitchell and
Lutterfield bending over the Mexican. It was plain that the wounded man
had suffered from his enforced ride.

Some time later the Kentuckian was pulled into a sitting position. His
hands loosened, he was allowed to feed himself, but the _carne_ tasted
like wood splinters when he chewed it.

"Not much like th' Range?" Shannon asked him. "Don't worry none--it won't
last long, Rennie, no, it won't!"

"You did take my papers."

"I sure did! You thought I was clean outta m' senses back there in th'
Jacks when that fool Texan called out your name--didn't you now? Well, I
wasn't an' what he said sure made me want to know a little more--seein' as
how Hunt Rennie might well be m' pa. He owed me a Pa, you know. M' real pa
was killed gittin' him outta prison. I didn't want no drifters cuttin' in
on what was rightly mine, in a m