go back to town fer a posse. Trail was already too cold. Could tell it
was a man that rode a pacin' horse."

His auditors looked at each other, striving to remember who of their
acquaintance rode a pacing horse. Sage-brush Charley shook his head.
"Nobody down this way, 'ceptin', of course, the boss, rides a pacer.
Must be one of the Lazy K outfit, I reckon."

"Most likely," said the Sheriff; "he struck out south, probably to
throw me off scent. Then he fell in with two other men, and this
balled me up. I lost one of the tracks, but follered the other two
round Sweetwater Mesa, till I came where they rode into the river. Of
course I couldn't follow the trail any farther at that p'int, so, bein'
as I was near Uncle Jim's, I rode over fer help to look along both
banks an' pick up the trail wherever it comes out of the river. Sorry
I must break up yer fun, boys, but some o' yuh must come along with me.
Duty's duty. I want Sage-brush, anyhow, as I s'pose I can't ask fer
Jack Payson."

Sage-brush pulled a long face. At any other time he would have jumped
at the chance of running to earth the dastardly murderers of his old
friend Terrill. But in the matter of this, his first experience a
wedding, he had tickled his palate so long with the sweets of
anticipation that he could not bear to forgo the culminating swallow of
realization.

"I don't see why I shouldn't be let off as well as Jack," he grumbled;
"our cases are similar. You see it's my first weddin'," explained the
foreman to the sheriff.

The other cowboys howled with delight. The humor of the situation
caught their fancy, and they yelled a chorus of protestation in
Hoover's ears. In this Colonel Allen joined.

"Don't spile the weddin'," he pleaded. "This event has already rounded
up the Sweetwater outfit fer yuh, an' saved yuh more time than you'll
lose by waitin' till it's over. Then we'll all jine yuh."

Hoover commanded silence, and, rolling a cigarette, gravely considered
the proposition. He realized that the murderers should be followed up
at once, but that if he forced the cowboys by the legal power exercised
to forego the pleasure they had been anticipating so greatly, they
would not be so keen in pursuit as if they had first "given the boss
his send-off." The considerations being equal, or, as he put it, "hoss
an' hoss," it seemed to him wise to submit to Allen's proposition,
backed as it was by the justice of his plan that the occasion