They did not greatly
care, so long as the force of the white men was divided. They galloped
away upon urgent business of their own, elated because their ruse had
worked out as they had planned and hoped.

Applehead took a restrained pull at the canteen, cocked his eyes back at
the butte they had just passed, squinted ahead over the flat waste that
shimmered with heat to the very skyline that was notched and
gashed crudely with more barren hills, and then, screwing the top
absent-mindedly on the canteen-mouth, leaned and peered long at the
hoofprints they were following. Beside him Lite Avery, tall and lean to
the point of being skinny, followed his movements with quiet attention
and himself took to studying more closely the hoofprints in the sandy
soil.

Applehead looked up, gauged the probable direction the trail was taking,
and gave a grunt.

"You kin call me a fool," he said with a certain challenge in his tone,
"but this yere trail don't look good to me, somehow. These yere tracks,
they don't size up the same as they done all the way out here. 'N'
another thing, they ain't aimed t' meet up with the bunch that Luck's
trailin'. We're headed straight out away from whar Luck's headed. 'N'
any way yuh look at it, we're headed into country whar there ain't no
more water'n what the rich man got in hell. What would any uh Ramon's
outfit want to come away off in here fur? They ain't nothin' up in here
to call 'em."

"These," said Lite suddenly, "are different horse-tracks. They're
smaller, for one thing. The bunch we followed out from the red machine
rode bigger horses."

"And carried honey on one side and fresh meat on the other; and
one horse was blind in the right eye," enlarged Pink banteringly,
remembering the story of the Careful Observer in an old schoolreader of
his childhood days.

"Yes, how do you make that out, Lite? I never noticed any difference in
the tracks."

"The stride is a little shorter today for one thing." Lite looked around
and grinned at Pink, as though he too remembered the dromedary loaded
with honey and meat. "Ain't it, Applehead?"

"It shore is," Applehead testified, his face bent toward the hot ground.
"Ain't ary one uh the three that travels like they bin a travelin'--'n'
that shore means something, now I'm tellin' yuh!" He straightened and
stared worriedly ahead of them again. "Uh course, they might a picked up
fresh horses," he admitted. "I calc'late they needed 'em bad enough, if