lonely horizon
greets the traveller here, and ten miles away from the railroad, in
any direction, a man on horseback and unacquainted with the country
would wish himself--mountain men will tell you--in hell, because it
would be easier to ride out of.

To the railroad men the country offered no unusual difficulties. The
Youngs were as much at home on a horse as on a hand car. Kennedy,
though a large and powerful man, was inured to hard riding, and Bob
Scott and Whispering Smith in the saddle were merely a part--though an
important part--of their horses; without killing their mounts, they
could get out of them every mile in their legs. The five men covered
twenty miles on a trail that read like print. One after another of the
railroad party commented on the carelessness with which it had been
left. But twenty miles south of the railroad, in an open and
comparatively easy country, it was swallowed completely up in the
tracks of a hundred horses. The railroad men circled far and wide,
only to find the herd tracks everywhere ahead of them.

"This is a beautiful job," murmured Whispering Smith as the party rode
together along the edge of a creek-bottom. "Now who is their friend
down in this country? What man would get out a bunch of horses like
this and work them this hard so early in the morning? Let's hunt that
man up. I like to meet a man that is a friend in need."

Bob Scott spoke: "I saw a man with some horses in a canyon across the
creek a few minutes ago, and I saw a ranch-house behind those buttes
when I rode around them."

"Stop! Here's a man riding right into our jaws," muttered Kennedy.
"Divide up among the rocks." A horseman from the south came galloping
up the creek, and Kennedy rode out with an ivory smile to meet him.
The two men parleyed for a moment, disputed each other sharply, and
rode together back to the railroad party.

"Haven't seen any men looking for horses this morning, have you?"
asked Whispering Smith, eying the stranger, a squat, square-jawed
fellow with a cataract eye.

"I'm looking for horses myself. I ain't seen anybody else. What are
you looking for?"

"Is this your bunch of horses that got loose here?" asked Smith.

"No."

"I thought," said Kennedy, smiling, "you said a minute ago they
were."

The stranger fixed his cataract on him like a flash-light. "I changed
my mind."

Whispering Smith's brows rose protestingly, but he spoke with perfect
amiability as he raised his finger