than usual and gone farther, so I quit the trail and struck across the
hills, for I didn't want to ride too far out of my way. When I got on
top of the first divide I ran onto a little spring and stopped to water
my horse and let him pick a bit of grass; I'd been riding eight hours,
and still had quite a jaunt to make. I must have been about three miles
south of the trail then."

He stopped to light the cigarette he had rolled while he talked, and I
kept still, wondering what would come next. MacRae wasn't the man to go
into detail like that unless he had something important to bring out.

"I sat there about an hour, I reckon," he continued. "By that time it
was darker than a stack of black cats, and fixing to storm. I thought I
might as well be moving as sit there and get soaked to the hide. While I
was tinkering with the cinch I thought I heard a couple of shots. Of
course, I craned my neck to listen, and in a second a regular fusillade
broke out--away off, you know; about like a stick of dry wood crackling
in the stove when you're outside the cabin. I loped out of the hollow
by the spring and looked down toward the trail. The red flashes were
breaking out like a bunch of firecrackers, and with pretty much the same
sound. It didn't last long--a minute or so, maybe. I listened for a
while, but there was nothing to be seen and I heard no more shooting.
Now, I knew the pay-wagon was somewhere on that road, and it struck me
that the bunch that got Hans and Rowan and held us up might have tried
the same game on it; and from the noise I judged it hadn't been a
walkaway. It was a wild guess; but I thought I ought to go down and see,
anyway. Single-handed, and in that dark you could almost feel, I knew I
was able to sidestep the trouble, if it should be Indians or anything I
didn't care to get mixed up in.