"Then," he declared, "Slaney's trailing a man with an old black plug hat and a brown duck jacket; the latter would certainly fix him, as blue's much more common. Now if he saw that man riding south at night he'd probably call off the troopers, and they'd work the trail right down to the frontier. As they wouldn't get their man, they'd no doubt give the thing up, deciding he'd already slipped across."
"But how's he going to see him, when Jake's up the track?"
"It strikes me there ought to be a black plug hat and a brown duck jacket somewhere in this settlement," drawled Thorne. "I'll leave you to find them."
A light broke in upon his companions, and they laughed; but one of them pointed out that Thorne might find himself unpleasantly situated if Corporal Slaney overtook him. Thorne, however, smiled at this.
"I've been driving easy the last few days, and it's hardly likely the police have a horse that could run Volador down," he said. "Besides, if he should press me too hard, I could lose my man somehow in the big bluff on the mountain."
They agreed with this, and proceeded to elaborate a workable scheme. Suddenly Baxter turned to Thorne, as though a thought had just struck him.
"Why do you want to do it?" he asked. "Jake Winthrop wasn't a partner of yours."
Thorne broke into a whimsical smile. Now that he endeavored to analyze his reasons calmly, he was conscious that none of them appeared sufficient to warrant any action at all on his part. He was only certain that he disliked Nevis, and that an anxious girl had not long ago looked at him with an appeal in her eyes.
"Since you ask me the question, I don't quite know," he confessed.
Baxter laughed, and turned to his comrade.