In a few minutes he rode north at a dead run, headed for the over-mountain trail, and it was not until he was gone that the foreman realized that he had not told his puncher a word about the events which had taken place during his absence.
Wolf crossed the mountain, turned to the left, and went around Gunsight on the west, heading back toward town to approach it on its blind side. He rode up behind the hotel shed, dismounted and crept along it, and as he passed a crack in the warped boards his eye caught a movement, and he stopped to peer through the crack. Two-Spot was crawling out from under the saloon. Arising to his feet, the tramp looked carefully around for signs of any of Cimarron's outfit who might have come after him, and then slipped through Dave's rear door.
The watcher stiffened, and a sudden thought sent his rage up to the border line of madness. Two-Spot's mysterious sleeping quarters were no longer a mystery to him. His eyes swept the side of the saloon, and the narrow space between its foundation sills and the ground. This open space ran along three sides of the building and he knew that a man under the floor could see the feet and ankles of anyone who passed along the building. Returning to his horse he mounted and rode off the way he had come, careful to keep the shed between him and Dave's rear wall. Reaching an arroyo, he dropped into it and followed it until far enough from town, and then, keeping under the cover of hills and brush, he emerged upon the trail and loped along it into Gunsight. Dismounting in front of Dailey's, he walked swiftly and quietly toward Dave's, bending low to keep under the two front windows, and paused at the door to listen.
"He! He! He!" shrilled Two-Spot, warming to the liquor he had taken. "I'd 'a' liked to died when Jerry told about him. I could smell them hides before they turned th' corner of th' hotel that night. They was so odorous they near made me sick. An' if he went into 'em a Wolf, I'm sayin' he come out a Polecat; this range never will forget it. He can't never live it down—never! An' Jerry's tellin' it all along th' way, too. I'm wonderin' if he'll come back."
Dailey laughed sarcastically. "I'm bettin' he won't. No man would."
"I'm shore I wouldn't," chuckled Fanning. "I'd ship off to South Americky, pronto—an' I wouldn't care what happened to th' ship while I was on it, neither."
"I'll take three to one he does come back," said Dave.
"Is twenty dollars too much?" asked Dailey.
"Twenty to my seven suits me," replied Dave. "I'll take th' same from Jim, too."