"Then you must have kept damned close to the coulée-bottoms," I retorted
ungraciously, "for I burnt the earth getting up on a pinnacle where you
could see me, before you had time to go very far."

"Oh, well, it's easy to lose track of a lone man in a country as big as
this," he returned suavely. "We all got here, so what's the odds? I
guess we'll stick here till morning. We can't make the round trip this
afternoon, and I'm not camping on the hills when it's avoidable."

It struck me that he was uncommonly philosophical about it, so I merely
grunted and went on with my dinner.

That evening, when we went to the stable to fix up our horses for the
night, I got a clearer insight into his reason for laying over that
afternoon. They had been doing some tall riding, and their livestock was
simply unfit to go farther. The four saddle-horses looked as if they had
been dragged through a small-sized knothole; their gauntness, and the
dispirited droop of their heads, spelled complete fatigue to any man who
knew the symptoms of hard riding. By comparison, my sweat-grimed dun was
fresh as a morning breeze.




CHAPTER XI.

THE GENTLEMAN WHO RODE IN THE LEAD.