"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south
slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either.
Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down
and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time
to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side. You two stay
up here, but you got to be awful careful not to show yourselves. Folks
down below look awful little from here, but if they've got glasses
you'd loom up plenty big, an' posse men's apt to pack glasses." The
two followed him to camp and a few moments later watched him ride off
at a gallop and disappear in the scrub that concealed the mouth of the
precipitous trail.

Hardly had he passed from sight than Bat rose and, walking to his
saddle, uncoiled his rope.

"Where are you going?" asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward
the horses.

"Me, oh, A'm trail long behine. Mebbe-so two kin see better'n wan."

A few minutes later he too was swallowed up in the timber at the head
of the trail, and Alice and Endicott returned to the rim-rocks and from
a place of concealment watched with breathless interest the course of
the lone horseman.

After satisfying himself he was unobserved, the Texan pushed from the
shelter of the rocks at the foot of the trail and, circling the butte,
struck into a coulee that led south-eastward into the bad lands. A
mile away he crossed a ridge and gained another coulee which he