ry and a
ground wire with him and he had cut in on a telephone line. There
were, he remembered now, two instruments on the operator's table here.
One was the twin to the thing upon which the resourceful Wricks was
playing.

Brent and Bud Sellers had ridden with spirits rapidly sinking since
they had drawn near to that territory which lay adjacent to Wolf-Pen
Gap. The failure to reach Halloway by 'phone at Viper was a bad
augury, since it left them in the position of an army whose
intelligence bureau has collapsed.

The two horsemen had ridden through wintry forests along steep and
difficult roads where it seemed that they alone represented humanity.
Of course Alexander, herself, might be traveling as uneventfully as
themselves, but they could feel no great confidence in that hope and
now there was nothing to do but to push on to Viper, perhaps passing by
spots where they were sorely needed, as they went, and to try to find
Halloway, whose silence left them groping in the dark.

Will Brent was, in the sense of present requirements, no woodsman. He
knew the forests as a lumber expert knows them, but the seemingly
trivial and minute indications that another might have read, carried
for him no meaning.

However, he put his dependence in Bud Sellers whose knowledge of such
lore amounted to wizardry, and at one point Bud halted abruptly gazing
down with absorbtion from his saddle.

"Right hyar," he said shortly, "Alexander stopped an' hed speech with
two horsemen. Ther looks of hit don't pleasure me none nuther."

"Why?" inquired Brent, and the mountaineer drew his brow into an
apprehensive furrow. "Fer a spell back, I've been watchin' these signs
with forebodin's. Alexander wasn't ridin' at no stiddy gait. She'd
walk her mule, then gallop him--then she'd pull down an' halt. These
other two riders did jest what she did--kain't ye read ther story writ
out in ther marks of them mule-irons on ther mud?"

Brent shook his head in bewilderment.

"Well, hit's all too damn plain an' hit would 'pear ter signify that
Alexander sought ter shake off two fellers thet didn't low ter be shook
off. Right hyar they all stopped, an' parleyed some."

"Why?"

"Because three mules stood hyar fer a leetle spell--ye kin see whar
they stomped, an' movin' mules don't stomp twice or thrice over ther
same spot. Then two of 'em went on gallopin'--and one went on walkin'.
Yes this is whar she got rid of 'em, but I misdoubts ef th