a water-gutted gulch not too near the fire they had built.

"Like huntin' for a needle in a haystack," said Bob. "Their trail's done
petered out. They might be in any one of a hundred pockets right close,
or they may have bore 'way off to the right. All they got to do is hole
up and not build any fires."

"Fat chance we got," admitted Dave. "Unless they build a fire like we
done. Say, I'd a heap rather be sleepin' here than by that niggerhead
blaze to-night. They might creep up and try to gun us."

Before they had been in the saddle an hour next day the trail of the
thieves was lost. The pursuers spent till sunset trying to pick it up
again. The third day was wasted in aimless drifting among the defiles
of the mountains.

"No use, Bob," said his friend while they were cooking supper. "They've
made their getaway. Might as well drift back to Malapi, don't you
reckon?"

"Looks like. We're only wastin' our time here."

Long before day broke they started.

The canons below were filled with mist as they rode down out of the
mountains toward the crystal dawn that already flooded the plain. The
court-house clock at Malapi said the time was midnight when the
dust-covered men and horses drew into the town.

The tired men slept till noon. At the Delmonico Restaurant they found
Buck Byington and Steve Russell. The trail herd had been driven in an
hour before.

"How's old Alkali?" asked Dave of his friend Buck, thumping him on the
back.

"Jes' tolable," answered the old-timer equably, making great play with
knife and fork. "A man or a hawss don't either one amount to much after
they onct been stove up. Since that bronc piled me at Willow Creek I
been mighty stiff, you might say."

"Dug's payin' off to-day, boys," Russell told them. "You'll find him
round to the Boston Emporium."

The foreman settled first with Hart, after which he, turned to the page
in his pocket notebook that held the account of Sanders.

"You've drew one month's pay. That leaves you three months, less the week
you've fooled away after the pinto."

"C'rect," admitted Dave.

"I'll dock you seven and a half for that. Three times thirty's ninety.
Take seven and a half from that leaves eighty-two fifty."

"Hold on!" objected Dave. "My pay's thirty-five a month."

"First I knew of it," said the foreman, eyes bleak and harsh. "Thirty's
what you're gettin'."

"I came in as top hand at thirty-five."

"You did not," denied Doble flatly.

The you