ravel," said the Virginian. "And your hawss can. If
you're comin' with me, you'll ride your mare. I'm goin' to trail them
hawsses. If you're not comin' with me, your hawss comes with me, and
you'll take fifty dollars for him."

Balaam was indifferent to this good bargain. He did not look at the
other or speak, but rose and searched about him on the ground. The
Virginian was also indifferent as to whether Balaam chose to answer or
not. Seeing Balaam searching the ground, he finished what he had to say.

"I have your six-shooter, and you'll have it when I'm ready for you to.
Now, I'm goin'," he concluded.

Balaam's intellect was clear enough now, and he saw that though the rest
of this journey would be nearly intolerable, it must go on. He looked
at the impassive cow-puncher getting ready to go and tying a rope on
Pedro's neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the
runaways had vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had
come into such straits. He was helped stiffly on the mare, and the three
horses in single file took up their journey once more, and came slowly
among the mountains The perpetual desert was ended, and they crossed a
small brook, where they missed the trail. The Virginian dismounted to
find where the horses had turned off, and discovered that they had gone
straight up the ridge by the watercourse.

"There's been a man camped in hyeh inside a month," he said, kicking up
a rag of red flannel. "White man and two hawsses. Ours have went up his
old tracks."

It was not easy for Balaam to speak yet, and he kept his silence. But he
remembered that Shorty had spoken of a trapper who had started for Sunk
Creek.

For three hours they followed the runaways' course over softer ground,
and steadily ascending, passed one or two springs, at length, where
the mud was not yet settled in the hoofprints. Then they came through
a corner of pine forest and down a sudden bank among quaking-asps to a
green park. Here the runaways beside a stream were grazing at ease, but
saw them coming, and started on again, following down the stream.
For the present all to be done was to keep them in sight. This creek
received tributaries and widened, making a valley for itself. Above
the bottom, lining the first terrace of the ridge, began the pines, and
stretched back, unbroken over intervening summit and basin, to cease at
last where the higher peaks presided.

"This hyeh's the middle fork of Sunk Creek,