Again the girl felt that queer sensation of having expected this to transpire, as if possibly she had helped plan the deed herself and had forgotten it. That night as she lay in bed her mind was concerned with it and at times the solution seemed almost to reach the surface of her consciousness. Two belated riders came up the lane. As they rode past her open window she heard the name of Magill.
"That's two for Bangs," said a voice she knew for Moore's.
The evasive sense of familiarity, of being in some way identified with the killings, was suddenly clear to her,—so clear that she marveled at not having known at once.
Old Rile Foster was haunting the Breaks near Arnold's, imposing grim and merciless justice on all those whom he suspected of having had a hand in the finish of Bangs.
X
Harris had left the ranch an hour before daylight, his ride occasioned by the reports of several of the men. In the last three days each couple that worked the range had found one or more of the new white-face bulls shot down in their territory. The evidence, as Harris pieced the scraps together, indicated that a lone rider had made a swift raid, riding for forty miles along the foot of the hills in a single day, shooting down every Three Bar bull that crossed his trail. A dozen dead animals marked his course. A few more such raids and the Three Bar calf crop would be extremely short the following spring. The near end of the foray had extended to within ten miles of the home ranch and Harris had gone out to have a look at some of the nearer victims. He located two by the flights of meat-eating birds but range stock had blotted out all possible signs. He rode back to the corrals in the early afternoon and joined Billie and Deane.
"Not a track," he said. "We must expect more or less of that. They'll cut in on us wherever there's a chance."
As Harris left them the girl pointed out a horseman riding up the lane.
"The sheriff," she volunteered, and Deane noted an odd tightening of her lips.