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They were up at dawn, ate a hurried breakfast, and then set out along the trail. Where the Rocking-R track branched off they paused for a few casual words of farewell, and then each went his way. A few hundred yards beyond, Buck turned in his saddle just in time to see Jessup, leading Stratton's old mount, ride briskly into a shallow draw and disappear.
Making the same cautious circuit Buck had taken around the southern end of the Shoe-Bar, they reached Rocking-R land without adventure and pulled up before the door of Red Butte camp about six o'clock. Gabby Smith was cooking supper and greeted them with his customary lack of enthusiasm.
"Those fellows, are so dog-gone lazy they'd sit and let grasshoppers, eat holes in their breeches." As he rode on he wondered a little what Jim Tenny, the Rocking-R foreman, could have to do with Lynch, who seemed to be on the outs with everybody, but Presently he dismissed the subject with a shrug. "I'll be getting as bad as Pop if I'm not careful" he thought.
"For one thing, if we take the trail around south of the Rocking-R we ain't likely to meet up with anybody who'll put Lynch wise, an' I take it that's important." "I'll say so!" agreed Buck emphatically. "The chances are that even if he got wind of you and me being together, he'd realize the game was up, and probably beat it for the border.
"No matter," shrugged the Mexican. "There is no hurry." With reiterated and profuse thanks, he pulled his horse around and rode back with Stratton as far as the Rocking-R trail, where he turned off. "He'll find some corner where he can curl up and snooze for the couple of hours he's saved," thought Buck, watching the departing figure.
She stiffened, and a faint flush crept into her face. Then her chin went up determinedly. "You rode to Paloma yesterday morning." It was more of a statement than a question. "Yes." "In the gully this side of the Rocking-R trail you met a Mexican on a sorrel horse?" Again Buck acquiesced, but inwardly he wondered. So far as he knew there had been no witness to that meeting.
In the face of what lay before her, the matter seemed trivial and unimportant. She caught the Rocking-R horse without much trouble and led him back to a broad, flat boulder on which Buck had managed to crawl.
She had noticed those initials then on his saddle-pocket, and knowing how unusual it was for a cow-man to touch his precious saddle with a knife, she made some casual comment, and learned how it had come into Buck's possession. What did it mean? What was he doing here on a Rocking-R horse? Above all, where was he?
Apparently he had hung around camp until nearly dusk, and then departed only when Gabby got rid of him by suggesting that his man had probably ridden in to spend the night at the Rocking-R ranch-house. Stratton and Jessup discussed the incident while making brief preparation for bed.
"You!" he muttered. "What How " She twined her fingers together to stop their trembling. "I was riding through the pass," she told him briefly. "I saw your horse and I I was afraid " A faint gleam came into the bloodshot eyes. "My my horse? You mean a a Rocking-R cayuse?" "Yes." He tried to sit up, but the effort turned him so white that the girl cried out protestingly. "You mustn't.
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