ight under him I'd have got
action on those two. But the jar threw my six-shooter where I couldn't
reach it, and the carbine was jammed in the stirrup-leather on the wrong
side. I reckon Gregory thought he got me first shot. He would have, too,
only Crow threw up his head and stopped the bullet instead of me. They
had ducked into that coulee by the time I got clear. Hicks grabbed your
horse and took him along. I'm somewhat puzzled to know why they didn't
stand pat and make a clean job of us both. Blast them, anyway!"

"Same here, and more of it," I fervently exclaimed.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Mac abruptly proposed. "We'll have to
make Pend d' Oreille and send word to Walsh. It'll take the whole force
to catch them now."

My gun lay where it had fallen when Hicks whacked me over the head. I
picked it up, replaced the empty cartridge, and shoved it back into the
scabbard. MacRae hoisted the carbine to his shoulder, and we started.

We poked along slowly at first, for I was still a bit dizzy from that
blow. Before long we came to a spring seeping from the hillside, and
when I had bathed my head in the cool water I began to feel more like
myself. Thereafter, we tramped silently across high, dry benches, slid
and scrambled to the bottoms of an endless succession of coulees, and
wearily climbed the steep banks that lay beyond. The cool morning wind
died away; the sun reeled up on its appointed circle, glaring brazenly
into every nook and cranny in the land. Underfoot, the dry sod grew
warm, then hot, till the soles of our boots became instruments of
torture to feet that were sadly galled by fruitless tramping around the
Stone. When a man has grown up in the habit of mounting a horse to
travel any distance over three hundred yards, a walk of twenty
undulating miles over a network of bald ridges and yawning coulees makes
him think that a sulphur-and-brimstone hereafter can't possibly hold
much discomfort that he hasn't sampled. A cowpuncher in high-heeled
riding-boots is handicapped for pedestrianism by both training and
inclination--and that scarred and wrinkled portion of the Northwest is a
mighty poor strolling-ground for any man.

But we kept on, for the simple reason that there was nothing else we
could do. MacRae wasted no breath in words. If the heat and the ungodly
steepness of the hills and the luke-warm water that trickled along the
creek channels ruffled his temper, he made no noise about it, only
pre