workmanlike job. Doubt it? Wasn't the dead man stretched in the shadow convincing proof of their capacity for pure devilishness? Read the history of those days along the line, and you'll turn some red pages. There were no half-way measures in the code of an outlaw then; the pair who held us up would have taken our lives as nonchalantly as they relieved us of our material possessions had we proved in the least degree troublesome.

I hinted what was in my mind to MacRae, and when he agreed that it was a possible contingency, we filed out of the treacherous light and squatted in the edge of a quaking-asp grove where we couldn't be seen, and where a coyote, much less a man, couldn't steal up on us without the crackle of dry brush betraying him.

"What do you think you'll do, Sarge?" Mac whispered to me, while we sat there undecided as to our next move. "Go on to Benton, or stay here on the chance of breaking even?"

"I've got to stick; it's the only thing I can do," I growled back. "I've been sure enough whipsawed this deal, but I'm still in the game, and when it comes to calling the last turn I'll be there with a stack of blues. How in hell can I show my face in Benton while some other fellow is packing the money La Pere trusted me to bring back? If I can rustle horses I'll send these two boys on home, with a note to the old man explaining how the play came up. If those jaspers flash any part of the roll in the Territory before snowfall, I'll get them. I've got to get them, to square myself."

"That would be my idea, if I were in your place," he answered. "If they're like the average run of men that turn a trick of that kind, they'll give themselves away in the long run. It's lucky, in a way, that you had paper money instead of gold; the big bills will be their downfall if they undertake to spend them in this country—and if old Hans had it straight, they're not going to pull out with a measly ten thousand dollars. It's an ugly mess, and liable to be worse before it's cleaned up. If there is a stake like that cached around the Stone, these land pirates will camp mighty close on the trail of anybody that goes looking for it. And it won't be any Sunday-school picnic dealing with them—they showed a strong hand there," he motioned to the place where Rutter lay.

"The best thing we can do," he continued, "is to drag it for Pend d' Oreille, afoot. We have two extra horses there. We can get a little sleep and move early in the morning. I'll have to report this thing in person at Walsh, but before I do I want to know if Hank Rowan was really killed at Stony Crossing. If we find him there as Rutter said, you can gamble that trouble has camped in our dooryard for a lengthy stay. And it might be a good idea for you to give your men a gentle hint to keep their mouths closed about this affair—all of it. There's a slim chance at the best of finding that gold, even if it's there, and it won't help us nor the rest of the Force to run down the men who held us up, if everybody on both sides of the line gets to talking about it."

"I'll tell them," I agreed. "I reckon you have the right idea. I think it's a cinch that if we land the men that set us afoot and got away with the money, we'll have the cold-blooded brutes that put Hans Rutter's light out. But I don't sabe, Mac, why those old-timers should be mixed into a deal of this kind. Their cattle and range on the Canadian had a gold-mine beat to death for money-making; old men like them don't jump two thousand miles from home without mighty strong reasons."

"They probably had, if we only knew," MacRae muttered. "I reckon we'd better start; we can't do any good here."

Mac led the way. The four of us slipped through the brushy bottom as silently as men unaccustomed to walking might go, for we had no hankering, unarmed as we were, to bring those red-handed marauders after us again, if they happened to be lurking in that canyon. Rutter's body we had no choice but to leave undisturbed by the blackening fire. In the morning we would come back and bury him, but for that night—well, he was beyond any man's power to aid or injure, lying there alone in the dark.

CHAPTER V.

MOUNTED AGAIN.

We stumbled along, close up, for the thick-piled clouds still hung their light-obscuring banners over the sky. Three yards apart we became invisible to each other. I followed behind MacRae more or less mechanically, though I was, in a way, acutely conscious of the necessity for stealthy going, one part of my mind busy turning over the quick march of events and guessing haphazard at the future.

Striding along in this mental semi-detachment from the business in hand, some three hundred yards down the coulée I tripped over a fallen cottonwood and drove the point of a projecting limb clean through the upper of my boot and into the calf of my leg—not a disabling wound, but one that lacked nothing in the way of pain. The others stopped while I pulled out the snag, which had broken off the trunk, and while I was about this a familiar clattering noise uprose near-by. Ever hear a horse shake himself, like a water-spaniel fresh from a dip, when he has been tied for a long time in one place with the dead weight of a heavy stock saddle on his back? There is a little by-play of grunting and clearing of nostrils, then the slap of skirts and strings and stirrup-leathers—a man never forgets or mistakes the sound of it, if he has ever slept in a round-up camp with a dozen restless night-horses saddled and tied to a wagon twenty feet from his bed. But it made us jump, welling up out of the dark so unexpectedly and so near.

"Saddle-horse—tied," Mac tersely commented. We squatted in the long grass and buck-brush, listening, and a few seconds later heard a horse snort distinctly. This sound was immediately followed by the steady beat of an impatient forefoot.

"Over yonder," I said. "And there's more than one, I think. Let's investigate this. And we'd better not separate."

Fifty yards to the left we struck a cottonwood grove, and in the outer edge of it loomed the vague outline of a horse—when we were almost within reaching-distance of him. I ran my hand over the saddle and knew it instantly for Bruce Haggin's rig. A half-minute of quiet prowling revealed our full quota of livestock, even to the pack-horse that bore our beds and grub, each one tied hard and fast to a tree. Also our six-shooters reposed in their scabbards, the four belts hooked over the horn of MacRae's saddle.

Maybe it didn't feel good to be on the hurricane deck of a good horse once more! Whenever I have to walk any distance, I can always understand why a horse-thief yields to temptation and finally becomes confirmed in his habit. It was rather an odd thing for those outlaws to leave everything, even to our guns, but I figured—and time proved the correctness of my arithmetic—that they had bigger fish to fry.

Once in the saddle, with the comfortable weight of a cartridge-belt around each man's middle, we experienced a revulsion of feeling. Primed for trouble if we could jump it out of the brush, we rode the bottom for half an hour. But our men were gone. At least, we could not locate them. So we took to the upland again and loped toward Pend d' Oreille.

"I've been thinking it isn't so strange—those old fellows being in this country—after all," Mac suddenly began, as we slowed our horses down to take a hill. "I didn't remember at first, but two years ago, just after I joined the