The start was made without advertisement. Fitzpatrick's horse-keeper was smoking cigarettes on the little porch platform, and at a word from Ballard he disappeared in the direction of the horse-rope. Giving him the necessary saddling time, the two made their way around the card-playing groups at the plaza fire, and at the back of the darkened mess-tent found the man waiting with three saddled broncos, all with rifle holsters under the stirrup leathers. Ballard asked a single question at the mounting moment.
"You haven't seen young Carson in the last hour or so, have you, Patsy?"
"Niver a hair av him: 'tis all day long he's been gone, wid Misther Bourke swearing thremenjous about the cayuse he took."
Ballard took the bridle of the led horse and the ride down the line of the canal, with Fitzpatrick's "piece of a moon" to silver the darkness, was begun as a part of the day's work by the engineer, but with some little trepidation by the young collegian, whose saddle-strivings hitherto had been confined to the well-behaved cobs in his father's stables.
At the end of the first mile Blacklock found himself growing painfully conscious of every start of the wiry little steed between his knees, and was fain to seek comfort.
"Say, Mr. Ballard; what do you do when a horse bucks under you?" he asked, wedging the inquiry between the jolts of the racking gallop.
"You don't do anything," replied Ballard, taking the pronoun in the generic sense. "The bronco usually does it all."
"I—believe this brute's—getting ready to—buck," gasped the tyro. "He's working—my knee-holds loose—with his confounded sh—shoulder-blades."
"Freeze to him," laughed Ballard. Then he added the word of heartening: "He can't buck while you keep him on the run. Here's a smooth bit of prairie: let him out a few notches."
That was the beginning of a mad race that swept them down the canal line, past Riley's camp and out to the sand-floored cleft in the foothills far ahead of the planned meeting with Fitzpatrick. But this time the waiting interval was not wasted. Picketing the three horses, and arming themselves with a pair of the short-barrelled rifles, the advance guard of two made a careful study of the ground, pushing the reconnaissance down to the mouth of the dry valley, and a little way along the main river trail in both directions.