lers returning to their quarters. Masked men were yet in evidence
occasionally, so that their habits caused neither remark nor suspicion.
A good many of the punchers, unable to stay longer, were slipping out
of town after having made a night of it. In the general exodus the two
friends hoped to escape unobserved.

They dropped into a side street, galloped down it for two hundred yards,
and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel with the road.
The foreman's wire-clippers severed the strands one by one, and they led
their horses through the gap. They crossed an alfalfa-field, jumped an
irrigation ditch, used the clippers again, and found themselves in a
large pasture. It was getting lighter every moment, and while they
were still in the pasture a voice hailed them from the road in an
unmistakable command to halt.

They bent low over the backs of their ponies and gave them the spur. The
shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly over them. Another
followed, and still another.

"That's right. Shoot up the scenery. Y'u don't hurt us none," the
foreman said, apostrophizing the man behind the gun.

The next clipped fence brought them to the open country. For half an
hour they rode swiftly without halt. Then McWilliams drew up.

"Where are we making for?"

"How about the Wind River country?"

"Won't do. First off, they'll strike right down that way after us.
What's the matter with running up Sweetwater Creek and lying out in the
bad lands around the Roubideaux?"

"Good. I have a sheep-camp up that way. I can arrange to have grub sent
there for us by a man I can trust."

"All right. The Roubideaux goes."

While they were nooning at a cow-spring, Bannister, lying on his back,
with his face to the turquoise sky, became aware that a vagrant impulse
had crystallized to a fixed determination. He broached it at once to his
companion.

"One thing is a cinch, Mac. Neither y'u nor I will be safe in this
country now until we have broken up the gang of desperadoes that is
terrorizing this country. If we don't get them they will get us. There
isn't any doubt about that. I'm not willing to lie down before these
miscreants. What do y'u say?"

"I'm with y'u, old man. But put a name to it. What are y'u proposing?"

"I'm proposing that y'u and I make it our business not to have any other
business until we clean out this nest of wolves. Let's go right after
them, and see if we can't wipe out the Shoshone-Teton