“Yea-a-ah, and he’ll find me,” laughed Jack. “But I’ve got a hunch that Mr. Reber is goin’ to have a hard time gettin’ here.”
“They spoke about the road being guarded. Did they mean against Mr. Reber?”
“Might be. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”
Buck Priest and his men went back to the ranch and packed two horses with blankets and enough food to last them several days. It was about dark when they headed southeast toward the Porcupine hills. Priest’s idea was to travel along the Porcupine for a way and then turn south toward the Circle S.
As far as he knew there had been no misbranding of cattle. Therefore he was of the opinion that the rustlers were moving a bunch of his stock toward the West Fork pass. If Park Reber were stealing cattle, that was the pass he would take them through to Clear Valley.
There was just enough moonlight to enable them to see to travel by. Buck hoped to find the rustler’s camp, but after traveling far along the Porcupine he decided to head toward the Half-Wheel, which was almost due west of where they were now. He reasoned that if the rustlers knew that O’Steen had escaped wounded they would possibly drop the herd and head for the Half-Wheel.
In the meantime Park Reber had gathered a dozen riders and was also heading down the valley. Nelson had told him what the two masked men had said about the road’s being dangerous, and Reber was not the man not to heed a warning. He left the road a short distance out of Tomahawk and took to the open hills where there would be no danger of an ambush.
“We’ll head straight toward Jack Silver’s place,” he told his men. “Buck Priest is in with Silver on this deal, that’s a cinch, so there’s no use going to his place.”
“And if it’s a scheme to run a lot of cattle out of the valley they’ll use the Trapper Creek pass,” declared Nelson. “I’d like to notch my sight on the jasper that killed old Sam Herd.”