mesa with a sharp incline. Instead of taking the hill, the stampede
split, part flowing to the right and part to the left. The cow-puncher
urged his flagged horse straight up the hill.

He had escaped with his life, but the bronco was completely exhausted.
Billie unsaddled and freed the cowpony. He knew it would not wander far
now. Stretched out at full length on the buffalo grass, the cowboy drank
into his lungs the clean, cold night air. His tongue was swollen, his
lips cracked and bleeding. The alkali dust, sifting into His eyes, had
left them red and sore. Every inch of his unshaven face, his hands, and
his clothes was covered with a fine, white powder. For a long drink of
mountain water he would gladly have given a month's pay.

Within the hour Billie resaddled and took the back trail. There was no
time to lose. He must get back to camp, notify Webb where the stampede
was moving, and join the other riders in an all-night and all-day
round-up of the scattered herd. Since daybreak he had been in the saddle,
and he knew that for at least twenty-four hours longer he would not leave
it except to change from a worn-out horse to a fresh one.

When Prince reached camp shortly after midnight he found that the
stampede of the cattle had for the moment fallen into second place in the
minds of his companions. They were digging a grave for the body of Tim
McGrath. The young Irishman had been shot down just as the attack on the
herd began. It was a reasonable guess to suppose that he had come face to
face with the raiders, who had shot him on the theory that dead men tell
no tales.

But the cowpuncher had lived till his friends reached him. He had told
them with his dying breath that Mysterious Pete had shot him without a
word of warning and that after he fell from his horse Peg-Leg Warren rode
up and fired into his body.

Jim Clanton called his friend to one side. "I'm goin' to sneak out an'
take a lick at them fellows, Billie. Want to go along?"

"What's yore notion? How're you goin' to manage it?"

"Me, I'm goin' to bushwhack Warren or some of his killers from the
chaparral."

Prince had seen once before that cold glitter in the eyes of the hill
man. It was the look that comes into the face of the gunman when he is
intent on the kill.

"I wouldn't do that if I was you, Jim," Billie advised. "This ain't our
personal fight. We're under orders. We'd better wait an' see what the
old man wants us to do. An? I don't recko