udden efforts to fling himself down and roll over on his persistent
rider. The Duke let him have it his way, all but the rolling, for a
while; then he appeared to lose patience with the stubborn beast. He
headed him into the open, laid the quirt to him, and galloped toward the
hills.

"That's the move--run the devil out of him," said one.

The Duke kept him going, and going for all there was in him. Horse and
rider were dim in the dust of the heated race against the evil passion,
the untamed demon, in the savage creature's heart. It began to look as
if Lambert never intended to come back. Jim saw it that way. He came
over to Taterleg as hot as a hornet.

"Give me that gun--I'm goin' after him!"

"You'll have to go without it, Jim."

Jim blasted him to sulphurous perdition, and split him with forked
lightning from his blasphemous tongue.

"He'll come back; he's just runnin' the vinegar out of him," said one.

"Come back--hell!" said Jim.

"If he don't come back, that's his business. A man can go wherever he
wants to go on his own horse, I guess."

That was the observation of Siwash, standing there rather glum and out
of tune over Jim's charge that they had rung the Duke in on him to beat
him out of his animal.

"It was a put-up job! I'll split that feller like a hog!"

Jim left them with that declaration of his benevolent intention,
hurrying to the corral where his horse was, his saddle on the ground by
the gate. They watched him saddle, and saw him mount and ride after the
Duke, with no comment on his actions at all.

The Duke was out of sight in the scrub timber at the foot of the hills,
but his dust still floated like the wake of a swift boat, showing the
way he had gone.

"Yes, you will!" said Taterleg.

Meaningless, irrelevant, as that fragmentary ejaculation seemed, the
others understood. They grinned, and twisted wise heads, spat out their
tobacco, and went back to dinner.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: Fice--dog.]

CHAPTER III

AN EMPTY SADDLE

The Duke was seen coming back before the meal was over, across the
little plain between camp and hills. A quarter of a mile behind him Jim
Wilder rode, whether seen or unseen by the man in the lead they did not
know.

Jim had fallen behind somewhat by the time the Duke reached camp. The
admiration of all hands over this triumph against horseflesh and the
devil within it was so great that they got up to welcome the Duke, and
shake hands with hi