"H—l!" growled the marksman, walking slowly forward for a closer look, which showed him that his last shot had cut through the vertebra and half of one side of the neck. It was good enough, and he turned and walked along the side of the house. Passing a window, he suddenly stopped and looked closely at the ground just under its sill, where boot prints were plainly visible. Before doing anything else he reloaded his gun, and then followed the prints with his eyes until the corner of the house cut them from sight. He stepped back until he could see the bunkhouse door to learn if anyone was coming up to investigate the shots, and his gaze followed the prints straight toward it until they became lost on harder ground. No one being curious about the shooting, he went back to the window and peered in. He could see nothing because of the curtain, and had about decided that he had enjoyed secrecy the night before, when a sudden thought struck him. The interior, being dark now, was not right for a test, and he went around to the door, opened it, threw up the other shades, and hastily returned to the window, where he smothered a curse as a small hole in the curtain let him see quite plainly. Again returning to the house, he closed the door and slipped his extra Colt into the waist-band of his trousers, where one side of his open vest covered it, put on his coat and, going out the rear door, sauntered toward the bunkhouse, his eyes finding and losing the boot marks as the trail passed over varying ground. Before he reached the house his four men emerged from it and began the regular, humorous, morning wrangle as to preference in the use of wash basin and towel. They grinned at his approach and he smiled in return, his eyes missing nothing in their expressions, and it was Fraser at whom he looked longest when he spoke.
"Throw my saddle on th' big bay, Bill," he smiled pleasantly. "I'm goin' up to Sherman to fatten th' balance at th' bank. I may be back tomorrow night, but if I hear of any cattle that can be got cheap I may go on an' look 'em over. You boys have plenty of supplies, but if you run short go up to Dailey. If he's got any cigars, get a box—I reckon we can afford that much of a celebration, in view of that herd. But don't drink too much. You know why."
Fraser got the saddle from the storeroom and went out to put it on the foreman's best horse. As he came out of the door he nodded toward the north. "There's Mac's sign already; he must 'a' passed around Gunsight. He's well on his way."
The others looked at the faint thickening in the air beyond the town and past the east end of Pine Mountain, where the dust from four thousand cattle rose heavenward.
"He's a wise bird, gettin' to th' crick last night," commented Carson. "He's been movin' since dawn; an' I bet he's glad it's cloudy, with that dry stretch ahead of him."
"Shucks!" snorted Dahlgren. "Thirty mile of dry trail ain't nothin'."
"Not much," admitted Carson; "but, still, it's better cloudy than boilin' under th' sun."
"I reckon Mac ain't thinkin' as much about it bein' cloudy as I am," smiled the foreman, turning to take the horse Fraser was leading to him. He had asked Fraser to get and saddle his horse in the hope that the puncher would stand on his dignity and, perhaps, provoke a quarrel, out of which anything might come; but Fraser paid no attention to the request, unusual as it was, and grinned as he stepped back.
"It's fifty miles to Sherman, an' I'd ruther have it cloudy, all th' way," smiled Big Tom, mounting. "Well, so-long, boys!" and he was off.
He chose the trail over Pine Mountain, not so much for its saving in miles, but because it gave him a high, distant point from which to look back over his trail, and it avoided the Doc's shack and Gunsight as well. Reaching the top of the mountain, he turned and closely scrutinized the trail, finding nothing to bother him; but he was bothered, nevertheless, and he determined to pay as much attention to the trail he covered as to that which lay before him. Setting out again, he went well to the west of Gunsight and struck the Sherman trail ten miles beyond the town.