"I'll score one fo' you, Grit, while I'm about it," muttered Sandy as he dismounted and carefully surveyed the sign. He even picked up Donald's returning shoemarks. Six horses had gone on, one led.
Sandy swung up the heavy stirrups and tied them above the saddle seat. He stripped the reins from the bridle and pulled down Pronto's wise head.
"Hit the back-trail fo' home, li'l' hawss," he said. "If I need me a mount to git back I'll borrow one. I got to go belly-trailin' pritty soon."
He gave the pinto a cautious slap on the flank and Pronto started off down the trail. So far Sandy believed he had not been seen. If he had, a rifle-shot would have been the first warning. With the experience of a man who has seen shooting before, he had chanced a miss, knowing the odds on his side. It was twenty to one Plimsoll and his men had hurried off to the Hideout.
A buzzard hung in the early evening sky, circling high and then suddenly dropping in a swoop.
"Looks like Grit's cashed in," thought Sandy. "That bird was a late comer, at that."
But it was not Grit.
The ravine curved, forked. One way led to Beaver Dam Lake, the other rifted deep through rocky outcrop, leading to the Waterline Range. The boundary fence crossed it. Two posts had been broken out, the wire flattened. Through the gap led the sign that Sandy followed. He carried his rifle with him and he moved cautiously but swiftly through the half light, for the cleft was in shadow. The walls lowered, the incline ended, became a decline, leading down. The clouds were assembling for sunset overhead, the moon just topped the eastern cliffs, beginning to send out a measure of reflected light. A beam struck a little cylinder, the emptied shell of a thirty-thirty rifle. There was another close by. And scanty soil was marked with more hoofs. Sandy halted, wondering the key to the puzzle. Did it mean a quarrel between Plimsoll's men? Altogether he figured there had been a dozen horses over the ground. It was only a swift guess but he knew it close to the mark. Had Plimsoll been joined or attacked? And...?
His practised eyes, roving here and there, saw still more cartridge shells. Walking cat-footed, he made no sound but suddenly three buzzards rose on heavy wings and he went swiftly to where they had been squatting. A dead man lay up against the cliff, a saddle blanket thrown over his face. This had held off the carrion birds. The body was limp and still warm, it had been a corpse only a short time. Sandy took off the blanket.
It was Wyatt! Wyatt, whom he had seen not much more than four hours before, riding on the main street in Hereford, threatening vengeance on Plimsoll. A bullet had made a small hole in his skull by the right temple and crashed out through the back of his head in a bloody gap!