"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I suppose God foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated, "an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an' there—the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies, an' them big black buttes to the south are the Judith, an' you can see—way beyond the Judith—if you look close—the Big Snowy Mountains. They're more than a hundred miles away."
The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze, made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair of glasses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.
"What is it?" asked the girl.
"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either. Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side. You two stay up here, but you got to be awful careful not to show yourselves. Folks down below look awful little from here, but if they've got glasses you'd loom up plenty big, an' posse men's apt to pack glasses." The two followed him to camp and a few moments later watched him ride off at a gallop and disappear in the scrub that concealed the mouth of the precipitous trail.
Hardly had he passed from sight than Bat rose and, walking to his saddle, uncoiled his rope.
"Where are you going?" asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward the horses.
"Me, oh, A'm trail long behine. Mebbe-so two kin see better'n wan."
A few minutes later he too was swallowed up in the timber at the head of the trail, and Alice and Endicott returned to the rim-rocks and from a place of concealment watched with breathless interest the course of the lone horseman.
After satisfying himself he was unobserved, the Texan pushed from the shelter of the rocks at the foot of the trail and, circling the butte, struck into a coulee that led south-eastward into the bad lands. A mile away he crossed a ridge and gained another coulee which he followed northward.
"If he's headin' into the bad lands I'll meet up with him, an' if he's just skirtin' 'em, our trails'll cross up here a piece," he reasoned as his horse carried him up the dry ravine at a steady walk. Presently he slanted into a steep side coulee that led upward to the crest of a long flat ridge. For a moment he paused as his eyes swept the landscape and then suddenly a quarter of a mile away a horseman appeared out of another coulee. He, too, paused and, catching sight of the Texan, dug in his spurs and came toward him at a run.