Endicott painfully raised a foot to the stirrup, and the Texan turned abruptly to the girl.
"Can you make it?" he asked. She replied with an eager affirmative and the Texan shot her a glance of approval as he watched her mount, for well he knew that she must have fared very little better than Endicott in the matter of aching muscles.
Mile after mile the four rode in silence, Tex in the lead with Bat Lajune close by his side. An occasional backward glance revealed the clumsy efforts of the pilgrim to ease himself in the saddle, and the set look of determination upon the tired face of the girl.
"Winthrup ain't wearin' well," thought the cowboy as his lips twisted into a smile, "but what could you expect with a name like that? I'm afraid Winthrup is goin' to wish I hadn't interfered none with his demise, but he won't squawk, an' neither will she. There's the makin's of a couple of good folks wasted in them two pilgrims," and he frowned darkly at the recollection of the note of genuine relief and gladness with which the girl had greeted Endicott; a frown that deepened at the girl's impulsive words to himself, "I think you are just splendid. I'll never distrust you again." "She's a fool!" he muttered under his breath. At his side the half-breed regarded him shrewdly from under the broad brim of his hat.
"Dat girl she dam' fine 'oman. She got, w'at you call, de nerve."
"It's a good thing it ain't daytime," growled the Texan surlily, "or that there tongue of yourn would get sun-burnt the way you keep it a-goin'."
Upon the crest of a high foothill that is a spur of Tiger Ridge, Tex swerved abruptly from the trail and headed straight for the mountains that loomed out of the darkness. On and on he rode, keeping wherever possible to the higher levels to avoid the fences of the nesters whose fields and pastures followed the windings of the creek bottoms.
Higher and higher they climbed and rougher grew the way. The scrub willows gave place to patches of bull pine and the long stretches of buffalo grass to ugly bare patches of black rock. In and out of the scrub timber they wended, following deep coulees to their sources and crossing steep-pitched divides into other coulees. The fences of the nesters were left far behind and following old game trails, or no trails at all, the Texan pushed unhesitatingly forward. At last, just as the dim outlines of the mountains were beginning to assume definite shape in the first faint hint of the morning grey, he pulled into a more extensive patch of timber than any they had passed and dismounting motioned the others to the ground.
While the Texan prepared breakfast, Bat busied himself with the blankets and when the meal was finished Alice found a tent awaiting her, which the half-breed had constructed by throwing the pack-tarp over a number of light poles whose ends rested upon a fallen tree-trunk. Never in her life, thought the girl, as she sank into the foot-thick mattress of pine boughs that underlay the blankets, had a bed felt so comfortable, so absolutely satisfying. But her conscious enjoyment of its comfort was short-lived for the sounds of men and horses, and the low soughing of the wind in the pine-tops blended into one, and she slept. Endicott, too, fell asleep almost as soon as he touched the blankets which the half-breed had spread for him a short distance back from the fire, notwithstanding the scant padding of pine needles that interposed between him and mother earth.
Beside the fire the half-breed helped Tex wash the dishes, the while he regarded the cowpuncher shrewdly as if to fathom what was passing in his mind.