“Maybe we’d better not,” Hollister dissented. “By that time they’d be so far ahead we’d never catch ’em. No, sir. We’ll leave a note here for the boss. Tack it to this cottonwood. If we don’t show up in a reasonable time he’ll trail back an’ find out what for not.”
“That’d do us a lot of good if Houck had dry-gulched us.”
Dud laughed. “You’re the lad with the imagination. Far as Houck goes, an’ Bandy Walker, too, for that matter, I’ll make you a present of the pair of ’em as two sure-enough bad eggs. But they’ve got to play the hands dealt ’em without knowin’ what we’re holdin’.”
“They’ve prob’ly got rifles, an’ we haven’t.”
“It’s a cinch they’ve got rifles. But they won’t dare use ’em. How do they know we’re playin’ this alone? First off, I’ll mention that I sent Buck back to tell the boss we’d taken the trail after them. That puts it up to them to act reasonable whether they want to or not. Another thing. We surprise ’em. Give the birds no chance to talk it over. Not knowin’ what to do, they do nothing. Ain’t that good psycho-ology, as Blister says when he calls a busted flush?”
“Trouble is we’re holdin’ the busted flush.”
“Sure, an’ Houck’ll figure we wouldn’t ’a’ trailed him unless we’d fixed the play right beforehand. His horse sense will tell him we wouldn’t go that strong unless our cards was all blue. We’re sittin’ in the golden chair. O’ course we’ll give the birds a chance to save their faces—make it plain that we’re a whole lot obliged to ’em for lookin’ after Powder River for us.”
Bob’s sagging head went up. He had remembered Blister’s injunction. “All right, Dud. Turn yore wolf loose. I’ll ride along an’ back the bluff.”
They left the river and climbed to the mesa. The trail took them through a rough country of sagebrush into the hills of greasewood and piñon. In mid-afternoon they shot a couple of grouse scuttling through the bunch grass. Now and again they started deer, but they were not looking for meat. A brown bear peered at them from a thicket and went crashing away with an awkward gait that carried it over the ground fast.
From a summit they saw before them a thin spiral of smoke rising out of an arroyo.