“I was down to Mayne’s night before last,” Steele observed. “You weren’t in sight.”
“Hunting horses,” Robin explained. He knew Mayne, or Ivy, or both, had told Steele that. What business of Mark’s was it, anyway?
“Where’d you ride?” Shining asked quite casually.
“So that’s it,” Robin thought—recalling the dead cows and the rifle shot that put him on the run out of Birch Creek bottom. Aloud he said: “Sand Coulee, Boggy Spring, west side of Chase Hill.”
“Much stock in sight?”
“Quite a lot.”
They rode two hundred yards in silence.
“There’s thieves workin’ on this range,” Shining Mark broke out suddenly.
“The hell you say!” Robin’s surprise was not simulated, but it was surprise at information coming to him from this source.
“I been ridin’ myself some lately,” Mark went on in his crisp tone. “I’ve seen things.”