Going to the window in his stocking feet, he listened again. There were
more voices murmuring on the veranda of the hotel now, but within a few
moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was
silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she
could have desired. And Terry went to bed and to sleep.

He wakened with the first touch of dawn along the wall beside his bed and
tumbled out to dress. It was early, even for a mountain town. The
rattling at the kitchen stove commenced while he was on the way
downstairs. And he had to waste time with a visit to El Sangre in the
stable before his breakfast was ready.

Craterville was in the hollow behind him when the sun rose, and El Sangre
was taking up the miles with the tireless rhythm of his pace. He had
intended searching for work of some sort near Craterville, but now he
realized that it could not be. He must go farther. He must go where his
name was not known.

For two days he held on through the broken country, climbing more than he
dropped. Twice he came above the ragged timber line, with its wind-shaped
army of stunted trees, and over the tiny flowers of the summit lands. At
the end of the second day he came out on the edge of a precipitous
descent to a prosperous grazing country below. There would be his goal.

A big mountain sheep rounded a corner with a little flock behind him.
Terry dropped the leader with a snapshot and watched the flock scamper
down what was almost the sheer face of a cliff--a beautiful bit of
acrobatics. They found foothold on ridges a couple of inches deep, hardly
visible to the eye from above. Plunging down a straight drop without a
sign of a ledge for fifty feet below them, they broke the force of the