He struck the trail of McCoy’s bunch of cows and followed across the hills. Falkner rode fast, since he knew the general direction the driver must take. Within the hour he heard the lowing of cattle, and felt sure that he was on the heels of those he followed. From the top of the next ridge he looked down upon them in the valley below.
This was enough for Falkner. Evidently Rowan intended to get the cattle to his corral before any move was made against Tait. The range rider swung to the right across the brow of the hill, dipped into the next valley, struck a trail that zigzagged up the shale slope opposite, and by means of it came, after a half hour of stiff riding, to the valley where the Triangle Dot Ranch had its headquarters.
He tied his horse in a pine grove and stole silently down to the bunk house. This he circled, came to the front door on his tiptoes, and entered noiselessly. A man lay sleeping on one of the farther bunks, arms flung wide in the deep slumber of fatigue.
Falkner reached for a rifle resting on a pair of elk horns attached to the wall, and took from one of the tines an ammunition belt. He turned, knocked over in the darkness a chair, and fled into the night with the rifle in one hand, the belt in the other.
Reaching the pine grove, he remounted, skirted the lip of the valley, and struck at its mouth the trail to the Circle Diamond. Three quarters of an hour later he was lying on the edge of a hill pocket above that ranch with his eyes fastened to the moonlit corral in which stood two saddled horses.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NIGHT RAID
THE moon was just going under a cloud when Rowan and his two companions rode away from the Circle Diamond. They had plenty of time before the appointed hour at the Three Pines. Since they expected to ride hard during the night, they took now a leisurely road gait in and out among the hills.
There was little conversation. Cole was not friendly toward Silcott, though he had had no open break with him. He still remembered with resentment that night when Larry had flirted so outrageously with Kate. To Jack Cole’s simple mind the thing had carried the earmarks of treachery. The two had been rather close. They had slept under the same tarp many a time. He could not understand the vanity which had driven Larry to a public exhibition of his power with women. But he and Kate had talked the thing out, had quarrelled and made up. His sense of dignity kept him from settling the matter with Silcott by the simple primitive method of fisticuffs. Therefore he bottled up his sense of injury under a manner of cool aloofness.