ing behind them save a circling hawk and the gray
monotone of the barren plateau, so he urged Coaley in among the
boulders.

There must be something back there, of course. Coaley was too
intelligent a horse to make a mistake. But it might be some drifting
range stock, or perhaps a stray horse. Certainly it was no one from
the Devil's Tooth, for Sam Pretty Cow had set off to mend a fence in
the lower pasture, and Shorty never rode a horse nowadays for more
than a half mile or so; and six o'clock in the morning would be rather
early for chance riders from any other ranch. With a shrug, Lance
dismissed the matter from his mind.

Where a faint, little-used trail went obliquely down the bluff to the
creek bottom, Lance saw again the hoofprints which the rocky ground
had failed to reveal. He could see no reason for taking this
roundabout course to go up the creek, but he sent Coaley down the
trail, reached the bottom and discovered that the tracks once more
struck off into rocky ground. His face hardened until his resemblance
to Tom became more marked than usual, but where the tracks led he
followed. Too often had he trailed stray horses in the past to be
puzzled now, whether he could see the hoofprints or not.

They must have made for the other side of the creek, gone up Wild
Horse gulch or the Little Squaw. There was just one place where they
could cross the creek without bogging in the tricky mud that was
almost as bad as quicksand. He therefore pulled out of the rocky patch
and made straight for the crossing. He would soon know if they had
crossed there. If they had not, then they would have turned again up
Squaw Creek, and it would be short work cutting straight across to the
only possible trail to the higher country.

He had covered half of the distance to the creek when Coaley again
called his attention to something behind him. This time Lance glimpsed
what looked very much like the crown of a hat moving in a dry wash
that he had crossed not more than five minutes before. He pulled up,
studied the contour of the ground behind him, looked ahead, saw the
mark of a shod hoof between two rocks. The hoof mark pointed toward
the crossing. Lance, however, turned down another small depression
where the soil lay bare and Coaley left clean imprints, trotted along
it until a welter of rocks made bad footing for the horse, climbed
out and went on level. Farther up the valley an abrupt curve in Squaw
Creek barred his way with