Stratton grinned. “I thought of that, and I rather hope it’s so. They’d be puzzled and suspicious, maybe, but they couldn’t be really sure of anything. It would be a whole lot better than to have them run across our tracks in the sand back there. That would give away the show completely.”
Twenty minutes or so later they reached the gully through which they had come out on the trail. Though there had been no further signs of the Shoe-Bar 245 men, their vigilance did not relax. Pushing on with all possible speed, they covered the distance to the little camp in very much less time than it had taken in the morning.
Here the horses had a brief rest while the two men collected their few belongings and loaded them on the pack-horse, for they had decided to go on at once. Both felt that no time should be lost in finding the sheriff and setting the machinery of the law in motion. Moreover, they were down to the last scrap of food and unless they stirred themselves they were likely to go hungry that night.
An hour later found them riding southward, following the route through the mountains used by the cattle-rustlers. Making the same cautious circuit Buck had taken around the southern end of the Shoe-Bar, they reached Rocking-R land without adventure and pulled up before the door of Red Butte camp about six o’clock.
Gabby Smith was cooking supper and greeted them with his customary lack of enthusiasm. Bud, who had never seen him before, was much diverted by his manner, and during the meal kept up a constant chatter of comment and question for the purpose, as he afterward confessed, of making the taciturn puncher go the limit in the matter of loquacity. His effort, though it could scarcely be termed successful, evidently got on Gabby’s nerves, for afterward he turned both men 246 out of the cabin while he cleared up, a process lasting until nearly bedtime.
It was not until then that Stratton, by a chance remark, learned that three or four days after his departure from the camp two weeks earlier, a stranger had been there making inquiries about him. Gabby’s stenographic brevity made it difficult to extract details, but apparently the fellow had passed himself off as an old friend of Buck’s from Texas, desirous of looking him up. He was a stranger to Gabby, slight, dark, with eyes set rather closely together, and he rode a Shoe-Bar horse. Apparently he had hung around camp until nearly dusk, and then departed only when Gabby got rid of him by suggesting that his man had probably ridden in to spend the night at the Rocking-R ranch-house.
Stratton and Jessup discussed the incident while making brief preparation for bed. So far as Bud knew there had been no stranger on the Shoe-Bar at that time; but it seemed certain that the fellow must have been sent by Lynch to spy around and find out where Buck was.
“I s’pose he went to the ranch-house first and Tenny sent him down here, knowing he wouldn’t get much out of Gabby,” remarked Stratton. “Well, as far as I can see he had his trouble for his pains. Unless he hung around for two or three days he couldn’t very well be certain I wasn’t somewhere on the ranch.” 247
Save as a matter of curiosity, however, the whole affair lay too far in the past to be of the least importance now, and it was soon dismissed. Having removed boots and outer clothing, and spread their blankets in one of the pair of double-decked bunks, the two men lost no time crawling between them, and fell almost instantly asleep.