"And now, I suppose, you'll get another pair to track the first?"
"No-o," replied the Inspector cheerfully. "It only makes another mystery to solve. At one time this looked like being a dull summer."
CHAPTER VII
AT THE H-LAZY Z
Cockney Aikens was striding up and down the little gravel walk before the ranch-house—the walk that Mary herself had built from the loose rock of the river-bed—his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Mary, raising her head sadly from her work to peer at him through the window, read the symptoms. So did the cluster of grinning cowboys from the darkened depths of the cookhouse.
Presently Cockney stopped in his stride to stare off over the valley to the opposite cliff, his eyes returning slowly to the trail and away up it toward town, sixty miles away.
Muck Norsley, from far back in the cook-house, looked through the window, watch in hand.
"Yer winning, Gin'ral, o.k. Jest about seventeen minutes now, I reckon, and he'll be saddling—unless he has to black his boots and crease his pants."
Cockney turned suddenly, kicked two innocent stones into the grass, and pushed open the ranch-house door.
"Mary, I'm off to town."