Bart whirled up the course of the spring-creek and the girl wheeled her horse to follow him while Carver held the straight course for the low jutting point. As Bart and Molly turned aside, the big Texan dropped from his horse a hundred yards down the little stream and planted his flag.
A dozen riders were almost abreast of Carver as he rounded the point and flung from his saddle in the ranch yard of the Half Diamond H. He had staked the old home ranch.
He turned to watch the rest flash past and recognized a big paint horse as a circle mount of Bradshaw’s string. The group that had clung so persistently instead of staking farther up the valley was composed of old friends to a man. He picked them one by one as they fanned out through the widening bottoms and staked them from the creek to the valley slope for two solid miles below the Half Diamond H.
“Box T riders or former Half Diamond hands,” he said. “Every man. I needn’t have put on such a strenuous last spurt if I’d only looked back to see who made up the bunch that was crowding me so hard on the final lap. I see old Joe Hinman’s hand in this.”
He turned at a sound behind him. A man stood calmly by a lathered horse some thirty yards back among the sod outbuildings.
“You’ll have to get off,” the stranger announced. “This is my ground. I staked it first.”
Carver stared for a brief space, unable to grasp the fact that another had rounded the point ahead of him. He certainly had not arrived since Carver reached the spot so he must have been there first. Then Carver’s comprehension cleared and he led his horse back toward the other.
“Looks like you had beat me here for a fact,” he said.
“By three minutes,” the stranger stated.
Carver glanced at the man’s horse. The animal’s shoulders and flanks were lathered white, as if from a long hard run, but its breathing was smooth and regular and its sides were steady. He glanced at his own mount with its heaving flanks; listened to the animal’s heavy labored breathing.