Bush looked along the line indicated. "By gosh," he ejaculated, "that cottonwood's blazed!"
"Blazed both sides," Rennie informed him. "I been there. And further on there's another tree blazed. Fresh."
"Lord—ee!" said Bush. "Them French boys wouldn't do that. You think it's the old buck?"
Rennie nodded. "He's wiser 'n we are; also closer to 'em. He's playin' a lone hand, so he has to wait his chance at Blake. He figgers Angus will be after Blake, and as he may run into bad luck himself he wants to make sure somebody lands him. He don't know why the other boys are there, but he knows there must be some good reason, because they're in a hurry and tryin' to hide their trail. So on gen'ral principles he blazes that cottonwood where he strikes their tracks where they've turned off, and keeps goin'."
"Uh-huh!" Bush agreed. "I guess we better not tell them Mackay boys about the Injun. They'd be for crowdin' things, and likely mess 'em up. They don't want nobody to get ahead of 'em. I wish I hadn't told 'em what old Braden said. But it seemed right they should know."
"So it is right," said Rennie. "Adam Mackay hadn't no gun. She was murder. Only thing, I don't savvy it bein' Gavin French. Givin' the devil his due, he's all man. And Braden was such a darn liar. Well, there's many a card lost in the shuffle turns up in the deal."
CHAPTER XLIV
THE RED AVENGER
Many miles beyond the head waters of Copper Creek four men rode along the crest of a sparsely timbered summit. Their horses were weary, gaunted with scant, frost-burnt feed. The riders were unkempt, unshaven, their eyes reddened by much staring into distances and the ceaseless pour of the mountain winds. The wind was now blowing strongly. It was very cold, and they bent against it, their hats pulled low, their collars high. Along the summit on which they rode and even along its flanks lay thin snow, the first of the coming winter. But above, on the higher ranges, it lay thickly white on the peaks and in the great gulches, promise of the twenty or thirty or forty feet of it which would fall before Spring, as it had fallen on that high roof of the world for ages.