“You all heard my word!” Rudabaugh’s voice broke hoarsely.
“You’ve heard mine! I ought to kill you now, but I am going to leave you.”
“The lousy thieves!” Rudabaugh tried to work up his vanished rage. “You think I’ll let them steal my horses and get away with it? It’s two less of them. Besides, there’s no law in here. Besides, you’re going to break your own word.”
The eye of McMasters narrowed.
“Don’t say that again,” said he. “I am saving you for a later day. Those were Comanches that you killed.”
“They’re not Comanches!” asserted Rudabaugh. “The Comanches don’t range in here. It’s all Chickasaws above here. They were Chickasaws, or maybe Wacos.”
Dan McMasters held up two moccasins before he replaced them in his pocket.
“I know Comanche moccasins when I see them,” said he. “Those women left these when they went into the water.
“There is no use your trying to trail me,” he added, as he backed to the edge of the wood where his horse was tethered. “I tell you, the best thing you can do is to get out of here as fast as you can!”
There was not a man in all that armed band that had courage to reach hand to weapon as he passed. Perhaps a sullen contempt for their leader had come to them. Rudabaugh’s own blasphemies, his sudden recovery of his weapons came too late. McMasters was in saddle and riding, hid by the cover of the wood.