ions. He was resigned, after a sickly
fashion. "I like to play blind-man's-buff," he said, wiping his
forehead, "but not so far from good water. They have pulled us
half-way to the Grosse Terre Mountains on a beautiful trail, too
beautiful to be true, Farrell--too beautiful to be true. They have
been having fun with us, and they've doubled back, through the Topah
Topahs toward the Mission Mountains and Williams Cache--that is my
judgment. And aren't we five able-bodied jays, gentlemen? Five
strong-arm suckers? It is an inelegant word; it is an inelegant
feeling. No matter, we know a few things. There are five good men and
a led horse; we can get out of here by Goose River, find out when we
cross the railroad how much they got, and pick them up somewhere
around the Saddle peaks, _if_ they've gone north. That's only a guess,
and every man's guess is good now. What do you think, all of you?"

"If it's the crowd we think it is, would they go straight home? That
doesn't look reasonable, does it?" asked Brill Young.

"If they could put one day between them and pursuit, wouldn't they be
safer at home than anywhere else? And haven't they laid out one day's
work for us, good and plenty? Farrell, remember one thing: there is
sometimes a disadvantage in knowing too much about the men you are
after. We'll try Goose River."

It was noon when they struck the railroad. They halted long enough to
stop a freight train, send some telegrams, and ask for news. They
got orders from Rooney Lee, had an empty box car set behind the
engine for a special, and, loading their horses at the chute, made a
helter-skelter run for Sleepy Cat. At three o'clock they struck north
for the Mission Mountains.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SUNDAY MURDER

Banks's _posse_, leaving Medicine Bend before daybreak, headed
northwest. Their instructions were explicit: to scatter after crossing
the Frenchman, watch the trails from the Goose River country and
through the Mission Mountains, and intercept everybody riding north
until the _posse_ from Sleepy Cat or Whispering Smith should
communicate with them from the southwest. Nine men rode in the party
that crossed the Crawling Stone Sunday morning at sunrise with Ed
Banks.

After leaving the river the three white-capped Saddles of the Mission
range afford a landmark for more than a hundred miles, and toward
these the party pressed steadily all day. The southern pass of the
Missions opens on the north slope o