He rubbed the palms of his hands together as he had over the scintillation of the jewelry counters. Though Jack had not looked around, his ear recognized that crisp sound of exultant power.
"Yes," Jack murmured thoughtfully, as if inviting Prather to go on with anything further he might have to say.
"All mine—mine!" Prather concluded, in a sort of hypnosis with his own picture.
Jack still stared at the earth, his profile limned in gold and the side of his face toward Prather in shadow. They were nearing the clump of cotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the range which ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish:
"Señor Jack, see there! Horsemen!"
Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to see some mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail a half mile nearer the water-hole than themselves. Their horses had the gait of exhaustion after a long, hard ride.
"You know who it is?" Firio whispered.
"Yes," Jack answered. "They had the better trail and have outridden us.
All right, Firio!"
"Leddy—Pete Leddy and some of his men!" exclaimed Prather, shading his eyes to watch the file of figures now passing under the cotton-woods. It seemed to relieve him. "I suppose he came on my account," he added, nodding to Nogales.
"Yes," said Nogales, with a grin. He always either grinned or his face had a half savage impassiveness.