n't the Law give another man the assignment to run us down," he
protested. "Someone we could have hated, and who would have hated us!
Why did they send Cassidy--the fairest and squarest man that ever wore
red? We can't do him a dirty turn--we can't hurt him, Pied-Bot, even at
the worst. And if ever he takes us in to Headquarters, and looks at us
through the bars, I feel it's going to be like a knife in his heart. But
he'll do it, Peter, if he can. It's his job. And he's honest. We've got
to say that of Cassidy."

The Ridge loomed up at the edge of the level plain, and for a few
moments Jolly Roger paused, while he looked off through the eastward
gloom. A mile in that direction, beyond the cleft that ran like a great
furrow through the Ridge, was Jed Hawkins' cabin, still and dark under
the faint glow of the stars. And in that cabin was Nada. He felt that
she was sitting at her little window, looking out into the night,
thinking of him--and a great desire gripped at his heart, tugging him in
its direction. But he turned toward the west.

"We can't let her know what has happened, boy," he said, feeling the
urge of caution. "For a little while we must let her think we have left
the country. If Cassidy sees her, and talks with her, something in those
blue-flower eyes of hers might give us away if she knew we were hiding
up among the rocks of the Stew-Kettle. But I'm hopin' God A'mighty won't
let her see Cassidy. And I'm thinking He won't, Pied-Bot, because I've a
pretty good hunch He wants us to settle with Jed Hawkins before we go."

It was a habit of his years of aloneness, this talking to a creature
that could make no answer. But even in the darkness he sensed the
understanding of Peter.

Rocks grew thicker and heavier under their feet, and they went more
slowly, and occasionally stumbled in the gloom. But, after a fashion,
they knew their way even in darkness. More than once Peter had wondered
why his master had so carefully explored this useless mass of upheaved
rock at the end of Cragg's Ridge. They had never seen an animal or a
blade of grass in all its gray, sun-blasted sterility. It was like a
hostile thing, overhung with a half-dead, slow-beating something that
was like the dying pulse of an evil thing. And now darkness added to
its mystery and its unfriendliness as Peter nosed close at his master's
heels. Up and up they picked their way, over and between ragged
upheavals of rock, twisting into this broken path