Eastward the horizon lights a glowing yellow, shot with feathery dashes of ruddy orange; yellow to green, and then the gray of the high starlit vault. But the stars are dimming, whimpering under their loss of power. Their archenemy 276 of day is approaching, and they must shrink away and hide till the fiery path of the monarch of the universe cools, and they are left again to their own.
Doc Crombie was riding at the head of his men when the sun cleared the horizon. He was staring ahead at the still hazy foot-hills, the hiding-place of the criminal he sought. The light of battle was in his keen, quick, luminous eyes. His face was set and stern. There was no mercy in the set of his jaws, in the drawn shaggy brows. He was out to rid the country, his country, of a scourge, a pestilence neither he nor his fellow townsmen would tolerate.
The rest of the vigilantes rode behind him, no less stern-faced than their leader. With fresh horses they had traveled long and hard that night. The journey had been chilly, and the trail rough. Their tempers were at a low ebb, and the condition only added to their determination to hang the man as soon as he was in their power.
Doc drew rein suddenly and called Smallbones to his side. The trail, which had now faded into something little better than a cattle track, was leading into the mouth of a narrow valley, bordered on either side by towering, forest-clad hills. He pointed ahead.
“That blamed kid said we’d keep right on down this cuttin’ to the third hill on the left,” he said. “It’s nigh four miles. Then we’d find a clump of scrub with two lone pines standin’ separate. Here we’d get a track of cattle marked plenty. Then we’d follow that for nigh two miles, and we’d drop into the rustlers’ hollow.”
“Sure. Don’t sound a heap o’ trouble,” said Smallbones, cheerfully.
“Say, I’m not figgerin’ the trouble. But we’ve traveled slow. We won’t make it for an hour an’ more, an’ we’re well past sun-up now. It was waitin’ for the boys to git in. I sort o’ wish I’d brought that kid along.”
They were moving on again at a rapid canter, and Smallbones was riding at his side. The little man, like the rest, was armed liberally. But whereas the others were, for the most part, content with two guns, he had four. It would not be for lack of desire on his part if somebody did not die before noon.
“We couldn’t help startin’ late,” grumbled the little man. “An’ as fer that kid, I’d sure ’a’ kep’ him with us. Who’s to say he ain’t handed us a fool game? He’s a crank, anyways, an’ orter be looked after by State. He guessed he see the rustlers at work, but didn’t rec’nize ’em. I said right then he was bluffin’. D’you think he wouldn’t know Jim Thorpe?”