“Dave went up Burroback Valley,” Jerry stated flatly. “Him and the boys wasn't on this side the ridge. They had it sized up that Bud might go from Crater straight across into Black Rim, and they rode up to catch him as he comes back across.” Jerry grinned a little. “They wanted that money you peeled off the crowd Sunday, Bud. They was willing you should get to Crater and cash them checks before they overhauled yuh and strung yuh up.”
“You don't suppose they'd hurt Marian if they found her with the horse? She might have followed along to Crater—”
“She never,” Eddie contradicted. And Jerry declared in the same breath, “She'd be too much afraid of Lew. No, if they found her with the horse they'd take him away from her and send her back on another one to do the kitchen work,” he conjectured with some contempt. “If they found YOU without the horse—well—men have been hung on suspicion, Bud. Money's something everybody wants, and there ain't a man in the valley but what has figured your winnings down to the last two-bit piece. It's just a runnin' match now to see what bunch gets to yuh first.”
“Oh, the money! I'd give the whole of it to anyone that would tell me Marian 's safe,” Bud cried unguardedly in his misery. Whereat Jerry and Ed looked at each other queerly.
CHAPTER TWENTY: “PICK YOUR FOOTING!”
The three sat irresolutely on their horses at the tunnel's end of the Gap, staring out over the valley of the Redwater and at the mountains beyond. Bud's face was haggard and the lines of his mouth were hard. It was so vast a country in which to look for one little woman who had not gone back to see Jerry's signal!
“I'll bet yuh Sis cleared out,” Eddie blurted, looking at Bud eagerly, as if he had been searching for some comforting word. “Sis has got lots of sand. She used to call me a 'fraid cat all the time when I didn't want to go where she did. I'll bet she just took Boise and run off with him. She would, if she made up her mind—and I guess she'd had about as much as she could stand, cookin' at Little Lost—”
Bud lifted his head and looked at Eddie like a man newly awakened. “I gave her money to take home for me, to my mother, down Laramie way. I begged her to go if she was liable to be in trouble over leaving the ranch. But she said she wouldn't go—not unless she was missed. She knew I'd come back to the ranch. I just piled her hands full of bills in the dark and told her to use them if she had to—”
“She might have done it,” Jerry hazarded hopefully. “Maybe she did sneak in some other way and get her things. She'd have to take some clothes along. Women folks always have to pack. By gosh, she could hide Boise out somewhere and—”