is layout and if you don't mind the old
sheriff he'll have to picket you."

She nodded and pulled Papoose out of the trail till the others filed
by, riding with Horne in rear of the rest.

The party halted while Harris dismounted to examine the trail. It was
hard-packed but the scant signs showed that shod horses had come in
since any had gone out.

"At least, there's some of them back," he said. "Likely all."

"Lang is busy gloating over the fact that the Three Bar is sacked,"
Alden said. "Figuring that the whole country will be afraid of him now
and that his friends will stand by--without a thought that his neck
will maybe get stretched a foot long before night."

Harris turned up a side pocket and the men waited while he and the
sheriff climbed a ridge on foot to investigate. Harris motioned to the
girl.

"Come along up where you can see," he said and she followed them up the
ridge. Two hundred yards from the horses they came out on a crest
which afforded a view of the basin that sheltered Lang's stockade.

From behind a sage-clump Harris trained his glasses on the group a mile
out across the shallow basin. Smoke rose from the chimney of the main
building. Two men stood before a teepee near the stockade. There were
two other tents inside the structure, with a number of men moving about
them. Three sat on the ground with their backs against the log walls
of the main house. Thirty or more horses fed in a pasture lot and a
little band of eight or ten stood huddled together inside the stockade
at the far end from the tents.

He handed his glasses to the girl.

"We'll be starting," he said. "By the time we get fixed the rest will
be closing in. You stay here and watch the whole thing."

"I'm going along," she said.

The sheriff demurred.

"It will be dirty business down there--once we start," he said.
"Business for men; and you're a better man than most of us, girl; but
you surely didn't reckon that Cal and me would let you go careening
down in gunshot of that hornet's nest."

"I'm as good a shot as there is in the hills," she said. "And it was
my ranch they burned."

The sheriff shoved back his hat and pushed his fingers through his mop
of gray hair.

"Fact," he confessed. "Every word. But there's swarms of men in this
country--and such a damn scattering few of girls that we just can't
take the risk. That's how it is. If you don't promise to stay out of
it we'll have to detail a coupl