ear sundown.

"Barring accidents, they can't get up on us now," Mac declared. "So I
think it'll be wise to keep south along the open bottoms. If they see us
splitting the breeze down Lost River, they won't look for us to bob up
from the opposite quarter to-morrow. When it gets dark and we're far
enough ahead, we can swing into the hills. That'll fool them plenty for
to-night. They'll probably try tracking us to-morrow, but I reckon
they'll find that a tough job."

They kept persistently after us, and we were more or less on the anxious
seat, till it did get dark. Then we turned sharp to the left and gained
high ground once more, congratulating ourselves on so easily getting out
of a ticklish place. If we hadn't moved up on Bevans they might have
surrounded us before we got wind of them. But we'd beaten them fairly,
and so we looked back through the dark and laughed; though I'm sure we
had no particular cause for merriment.

CHAPTER XV.

PIEGAN TAKES A HAND.

I don't believe a detailed account of how we spent that night would be
classed as wildly interesting; if memory serves me right, it was a
bleak, hungry, comfortless passage of time, and I am willing to let it
go at that. We managed to secure a buffalo steak for breakfast. No man
needed to starve in that country during those days of plentiful game;
but we were handicapped by the necessity of doing our hunting in a very
surreptitious manner. However, we didn't starve; the worst we
experienced was an occasional period of acute hunger, when we didn't
dare fire a shot for fear of revealing our whereabouts.

Nor can I see, now, where we accomplished anything beyond killing time
the following day. To be sure, we scouted faithfully, and once or twice
came perilously near being caught by squads of Mounted Police appearing
from unexpected quarters. Our scouting was so much wasted energy. We got
nowhere near the Police camp; we failed to get a glimpse of any of our
men; and so, for all we knew to the contrary, they might have loaded the
plunder and decamped for other regions. When night again spread its
concealing folds about us, we had only one tangible fact as a reward for
our exertions--Lessard had returned to Fort Walsh--presumably. Early
that morning, escorted by four troopers, he had crossed Lost River and
disappeared in the direction of the post. Of his identity the
field-glasses assured us. But that was the sum total of our acquired
knowledge, and it bro