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"The Judge questioned his evidence doubted it even censured the Police for using such an acknowledged rustler. . . . Pete left the courtroom straight for the old game . . . and I, his old friend I was put on his track. It was my duty. In the meantime some of his old companions from the Badlands crossed the border. I don't know whether Blue Pete joined up with them or not.
Having learned all that, Miss Allen struck off by herself, straight down into the Badlands where nobody seemed to have done much searching. The reason for that was, that the Happy Family had come out of the breaks on the day that the Kid was lost.
He sat huddled in the shadow of a rock and wished profanely that women would stay at home and not go camping out in the Badlands, where their presence was distinctly inappropriate and undesirable. If the men down there were alone, he felt sure that he could make them understand.
"'Magine me, Blue Pete, bes' shot in the Badlands, an' Canada, too, fer that matter least that's so, now Dutchy's gone, an' it was nip 'n' tuck between us 'magine me, cow-puncher from my born days, sometime rustler, sometime Mounted P'lice detective, sometime oh, sometime pretty near everythin' with a horse in it, an' a rifle, an' a rope 'magine me workin' 'longside a gang o' Dagoes 'n' Poles that think a knife's fer stickin' people, an' a rifle fer the P'lice . . . me shovin' rocks 'n' logs into a hole in the groun' that won't fill this side everlastin'! . . . Kin yuh 'magine it, ole woman?
Driven by the press of civilization into the badlands and deserts, fought with poison, gun, and trap, the coyote had survived, adapting to new ways with all his legendary cunning. Those who had reviled him as vermin had unwillingly added to the folklore which surrounded him, telling their own tales of robbed traps, skillful escapes.
And a variegated mass in the distance marked the Rainbow Buttes, rising isolated and alone from out the badlands. Shady struck a swift gliding trot and dropped down the slope, disappearing in the first twisted masses of timber-line spruce. For the first few hours after her departure Breed gave it no thought, but when she failed to turn up he grew increasingly uneasy.
Slash, chop and heave, from the swiftest to the biggest, to the last, down down he sent them whirling from the ledge to the gaping gulch below, where rocks and snags of trunks were sharp to do their work. In fifty seconds it was done. The rock had splashed the stream aside the Penroof pack was all wiped out; and Badlands Billy stood there, alone again on his mountain.
The hills were dim, the valleys dark, when from the nearest gloom there rolled a long-drawn cry that all men recognize instinctively melodious, yet with a tone in it that sends a shudder up the spine, though now it has lost all menace for mankind. We listened for a moment. It was the Wolf-hunter who broke silence: "That's Badlands Billy; ain't it a voice? He's out for his beef to-night."
The Little Doctor was learning some things about her man-child, and one of them was this: When he rode away into the Badlands and was lost, other things were lost, and lost permanently; he was no longer her baby, for all he liked to be rocked. He had come back to her changed, so that she studied him amazedly while she worshipped.
Which puzzled Irish a little at first. Later, he thought he understood. The cattle, it would seem, had been driven purposefully into the edge of the breaks and there made to scatter out through the winding gulches and canyons that led deeper into the Badlands.
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