"Oh, well, it's easy to lose track of a lone man in a country as big as this," he returned suavely. "We all got here, so what's the odds? I guess we'll stick here till morning. We can't make the round trip this afternoon, and I'm not camping on the hills when it's avoidable."
It struck me that he was uncommonly philosophical about it, so I merely grunted and went on with my dinner.
That evening, when we went to the stable to fix up our horses for the night, I got a clearer insight into his reason for laying over that afternoon. They had been doing some tall riding, and their livestock was simply unfit to go farther. The four saddle-horses looked as if they had been dragged through a small-sized knothole; their gauntness, and the dispirited droop of their heads, spelled complete fatigue to any man who knew the symptoms of hard riding. By comparison, my sweat-grimed dun was fresh as a morning breeze.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GENTLEMAN WHO RODE IN THE LEAD.
It took us all of the next day to make the trip to Stony Crossing and back by way of the place where Rutter was buried. Goodell had no fancy, he said, for a night camp on the prairie when it could be avoided. He planned to make an early start from Pend d' Oreille, and thus reach Walsh by riding late the next night. So, well toward evening, we swung back to the river post. Goodell and his fellows were nowise troubled by the presence of dead men; they might have been packing so much merchandise, from their demeanor. But I was a long way from feeling cheerful. The ghastly burdens, borne none too willingly by the extra horses, put a damper on me, and I'm a pretty sanguine individual as a rule.
When we had unloaded the bodies from the uneasy horses, and laid them carefully in a lean-to at the stable-end, we led our mounts inside. Goodell paused in the doorway and emitted a whistle of surprise at sight of a horse in one of the stalls. I looked over his shoulder and recognized at a glance the rangy black MacRae had ridden.
"They must have given Mac's horse to another trooper," I hazarded.
"Not that you could notice," Goodell replied, going on in. "They don't switch mounts in the Force. If they have now, it's the first time to my knowledge. When a man's in clink, his nag gets nothing but mild exercise till his rightful rider gets out. And MacRae got thirty days. Well, we'll soon find out who rode him in."