Into the Lion's Mouth.


Perry Potter, when he had read the foreman's note, asked how long since
I left camp; when I told him that I was there at daylight, he looked at me
queerly and walked off without a word. I didn't say anything, either.

I stayed at the ranch overnight, intending to start back the next morning.
The round-up would be west of where I had left them, according to the
foreman--or wagon-boss, as he is called. Logically, then, I should take
the trail that led through Kenmore, the mining-camp owned by King, and
which lay in the heart of White Divide ten miles west of King's Highway.
That, I say, was the logical route--but I wasn't going to take it.
I wasn't a bit stuck on that huddle of corrals and sheds, with the trail
winding blindly between, and I wasn't in love with the girl or with old
King; but, all the same, I meant to go back the way I came, just for my
own private satisfaction.

While I was saddling Shylock, in the opal-tinted sunrise, Potter came down
and gave me the letter to the wagon-boss, an answer to the one I had
brought.

"Here's some chuck the cook put up for yuh," he remarked, handing me a
bundle tied up in a flour-sack. "You'll need it 'fore yuh get through to
camp; you'll likely be longer going than yuh was comin'."

"Think so?" I smiled knowingly to myself and left him staring
disapprovingly after me. I could easily give a straight guess at what he
was thinking.