o into town with this, he
felt his way cautiously out of his hiding place. Without really hoping
to recover it, he began to search for his hat and to his surprise found
it in another gully near where he had tumbled from his horse. The
driver of the freighting outfit wondered at seeing Laramie on foot. He
explained that he had been hunting and that his horse had taken a
short-cut home.

Stone's companions under instructions had left him and returned to
Doubleday's before the shot across the Crazy Woman. Stone himself got
back to Doubleday's ranch at about the time that Laramie started for
Sleepy Cat in the evening. But Barb Doubleday and Van Horn, he was
told, were in town. He followed them and discovered Van Horn in the
bar room at the hotel.

"I hear you got him," muttered Van Horn, bending his keen eyes on Stone.

"Who said so?" demanded Stone.

"His horse came into Kitchen's barn this afternoon, all saddled.
McAlpin is telling he heard a rifle shot on the Crazy Woman. They're
wild down at the barn over it. Did you get him?"

Stone paused over a glass of whisky; his face brightened: "I tumbled
him off his horse, if you call that getting him."

Van Horn asked questions impatiently. Stone answered with the
indifference of the man that had turned a big trick. But Van Horn
insisted on knowing what had become of Laramie.

"He tumbled into a hole," said Stone. "I didn't cross the creek to
look for him."

"Why didn't you?" asked Van Horn nervously.

Stone dallied with his glass: "I watched the hole all day. He didn't
come out. That was enough, wasn't it?"

"No," snapped Van Horn.

"Well, I'll tell you, Harry; next time you and the old man want a job
done, do it yourself. I never liked Laramie: I didn't care for getting
too close to the hole he tumbled into. After he was hit, he stuck to
his horse a little too long to suit me," said Stone shrewdly.

Van Horn's retort was contemptuous and pointed. He laughed: "Afraid of
him, eh?"

Stone regarded him malevolently: "Look here!" he exclaimed harshly,
"I'll make you a little proposition. When I get shaved we'll ride over
to the Crazy Woman and you c'n look in the hole for yourself."

The uncertainty irritated Van Horn. When Stone, newly plastered,
emerged from the barber shop, Van Horn took him with his story to
Doubleday whom they found in his room, chewing the stub of a cold cigar
and looking over a stock journal. He did not appear amiable,