“Perhaps Deadshot ain’t right,” suggested Pinky, to whom his boss’ words brought up unexpected dangers.
But none of the others offered any comment, and in silence, each man absorbed in his own thoughts, the quartet, bound on their mission of revenge, swept along over the trampled trail.
CHAPTER VI.
THE AVENGERS ARE DELAYED.
After an hour’s hard riding, the avengers came upon the body of a steer lying in the trail.
The sight of the beast’s carcass seemed to madden the owner of the Double Cross ranch.
“Look at that steer!” he yelled. “Never was a better beef grazed the plains! And here it lies, dead from being driven to death! Curse the fiends! I’ll make them suffer for raiding my cattle and then running them to death! After them, boys, don’t dally to examine, the steer!”
“Easy, Sam, easy,” returned Sandy. “We’ll get ’em, don’t worry. But it won’t do any harm to look at the crittur. A few minutes won’t make any difference, and we can tell from the heat of the body about how far the lifters are ahead of us.”
Scarce a moment after the foreman had voiced this suggestion was it before Deadshot was on the ground.
Still smarting under the sarcasm of his boss over his failure to pick out the horse tracks when they struck the trail, the cowboy had no sooner gained the side of the prostrate steer than he was upon the mesquite. And, even as Sandy spoke, with skilled hands, he was running over the hide.