he didn't git back a certain
time! 'N' that wasn't so fur back, shorely,--only two years. Why dang
your fool heart, I've laid out there in them hills myself and fit
off the Navvies--'n' _I_ didn't see nothin' much to laugh at, now I'm
tellin' yuh! Time I went there after Jose Martinez--"

"Better get under way, boys," Luck interrupted, having heard many times
the details of that fight and capture. "We'll throw out a circle and
pick up the trail of that machine, or whatever they made their getaway
in. My idea is that they must have stached some horses out here
somewhere. I don't believe they'd take the risk of trying to get away
in a machine; that would hold them to the main trails, mostly. I know it
wouldn't be my way of getting outa reach. I'd want horses so I could get
into rough country, and I've doped it out that Ramon is too trail-wise
to bank very high on an automobile once he got out away from town.
Applehead, you and Lite and Pink and Weary form one party if it comes
to where we want to divide forces. Pack a complete camp outfit on the
sorrel and the black--you notice that's the way I had 'em packed first.
Keep their packs just as we started out, then you'll be ready to strike
out by yourselves whenever it seems best. Get me?"

"We get you, boss," Weary sang out cheerfully, and went to work
gathering up the breakfast things and putting them into two little piles
for the packs. Pink led up the black and the sorrel, and helped to pack
them with bedding and supplies for four, as Luck had ordered, while Lite
and Applehead saddled their horses and then came up to help throw the
diamond hitches on the packs.

A couple of rods nearer the rock wall Happy Jack was grumbling, across
the canvas pack of a little bay, at Big Medicine, who was warning
him against leaving his hair so long as a direct temptation to
scalp-lifting. Luck bad already mounted and ridden out a little way,
where he could view the country behind them with his field glasses,
to make sure that in the darkness they had not passed by anything that
deserved a closer inspection. He came back at a lope and motioned to
Andy and the Native Son.

"That red automobile is standing back about half a mile," he announced
hurriedly. "Empty and deserted, looks like. We'll go back and take a
look at it. The rest of you can finish packing and wait here till we
come back. No use making extra travel for your horses. They'll get all
they need, the chances are."

The