cow-puncher. Kerr himself, Lambert thought again. He stood with
the taunting message in his fingers, looking toward the Kerr ranchhouse,
some seven or eight miles to the south, and stood so quite a while, his
eyes drawn small as if he looked into the wind.

"All right; I'll take you up on that," he said.

He rode slowly out through the gap, following the fresh trail. As
before, it was made by the horse with the notch in its left hind hoof.
It led to a hill three-quarters of a mile beyond the fence. From this
point it struck a line for the distant ranchhouse.

Lambert did not go beyond the hill. Dismounting, he stood surveying the
country about him, struck for the first time by the view that this
vantage-point afforded of the domain under his care. Especially the line
of fence was plainly marked for a long distance on either side of the
little ridge where the last cut had been made. Evidently the skulker
concealed himself at this very point and watched his opening, playing
entirely safe. That accounted for all the cutting having been done by
daylight, as he was sure had been the case.

He looked about for trace of where the fellow had lain behind the fringe
of sage, but the ground was so hard that it would not take a human
footprint. As he looked he formulated a plan of his own. Half a mile or
more beyond this hill, in the direction of the Kerr place, a small butte
stood, its steep sides grassless, its flat top bare. That would be his
watchtower from that day forward until he had his hand on this defiant
rascal who had time, in his security, to stop and write a note.

That night he scaled the little butte after mending the fence behind
him, leaving his horse concealed among the huge blocks of rock at its
foot. Next day, and the one following, he passed in the blazing sun, but
nobody came to cut the fence. At night he went down, rode his horse to
water, turned him to graze, and went back to his perch among the ants
and lizards on top of the butte.

The third day was cloudy and uneventful; on the fourth, a little before
nine, just when the sun was squaring off to shrivel him in his skin,
Lambert saw somebody coming from the direction of Kerr's ranch.

The rider made straight for the hill below Lambert's butte, where he
reined up before reaching the top, dismounted and went crawling to the
fringe of sage at the farther rim of the bare summit. Lambert waited
until the fellow mounted and rode toward the fence, then he