“We’ll have some supper, and then get those fellows, if you” (meaning the trader) “will show the road.”
“I sure will,” he agreed.
After a meal, he led the way in his car, and we followed. Two miles over the hill! It is true we found one deserted camp. And then we went on and on. The orders were, silence, and lights out. The road into the Castle Butte country is winding, over little steep-pitched hills and down through narrow washes. When we had gone five miles, deep night had shut down, lighted only by a misty moon that rather obscured things in those twisted little vales and defiles. Suddenly the trader stopped his car.
“I believe that’s one of them,” he called.
Ahead of us showed a pony. Two of the deputies jumped out and ran forward, to find a man and a boy on the one horse. Off came the man, and the boy too. At the car he was identified as one of the assailants. The pony was turned loose to graze. The man joined One-eyed Dan et al. in the rear seat, another pair of handcuffs making the three secure in one squad.
But we had reckoned without the boy. He was about ten years old, and these things seemed to him as mysterious, not to say alarming. When he realized that strange [[305]]men had chained up his kinsman, he raised a soul-stirring bawl to Heaven. It was no time or place for explanations, so we gagged him with a handkerchief and prepared to go on.
“How much farther?” I asked the guide.
“Just over the next hill.”
“Well, this speedometer says we have come seven miles.”
“From the next pitch we shall see the camp,” he assured me, confidently.