“Good-by—till we meet again.”
“And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I’ve got a particular engagement in the hills, but I’ll be right glad to meet him when he comes.”
He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. She caught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hill beyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.
Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her a haunting snatch of uncouth song:
“Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,
In my narrow grave just six by three,”
Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it pathetically likely he might get the wish of his song.
To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he had followed Miss Mackenzie’s trail into the hills and found her at a mountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was about to set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place, when he arrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle’s ranch.
“I reckon there ain’t any use asking you if you seen anything of Wolf Leroy’s outfit,” said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd, wrinkled face.
“No, I reckon there’s no use asking me that,” returned Collins, with a laugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.
“We’re after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I’ll be moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don’t look none played out from her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain’t it, how she could have wandered that far and her afoot?”