CHAPTER VI
THE BLOOD-STAINED SADDLE
“Hello, kid!” said Stratton quietly. “You awake? What’s up, anyhow?”
There was a rustle in the adjoining bunk, the thud of bare feet on the floor, and Jessup’s face loomed, wedge-shaped and oddly white, through the shadows.
“They’re gone,” he repeated, with a curious, nervous hesitancy of manner.
“I know. You said that before. What the devil are they doing out this time of night?”
In drawing his weapon to him, Buck’s eyes had fallen on his wrist-watch, the radiolite hands of which indicated twenty minutes after twelve. He awaited Jessup’s reply with interest, and it struck him as unnaturally long in coming.
“I don’t rightly know,” the youngster said at length. “I s’pose they must have gone out after—the rustlers.”