Nevertheless, Cheyenne was pleased.  His boy had sand, and liked adventure.  Little Jim might have stayed in camp, with Bartley, and spent a joyous day shooting at a mark, incidentally hinting to the Easterner that “his ole twenty-two was about worn out.”  But Little Jim had chosen to follow his father into the hills.

“Reckon he figures to see what’ll happen,” muttered Cheyenne as he led his horse off the trail and waited for Jimmy to come up.

Little Jim’s black hat bobbed steadily up the switchbacks.  Presently he was on the stretch of trail at the end of which his father waited, concealed in the brush.

As Little Jim’s pony approached the bend it pricked its ears and snorted.  “Git along, you!” said Jimmy.

“Where you goin’?” queried Cheyenne, stepping out on the trail.

Little Jim gazed blankly at his father.  “I’m just a-ridin’.  I wa’n’t goin’ no place.”

“Well, you took the wrong trail to get there.  You fan it back to the folks.”

“Aunt Jane is my boss!” said Jimmy defiantly. “’Course she is,” agreed Cheyenne.  “You and me, we’re just pardners.  But, honest, Jimmy, you can’t do no good, doggin’ along after me.  Your Aunt Jane would sure stretch my hide if she knowed I let you come along.”

“I won’t tell her.”

“But she’d find out.  You just ride back and wait down at my camp.  I’ll find them hosses, all right.”

Little Jim hesitated, twisting his fingers in his pony’s mane.  “Suppose,” he ventured, “that a bunch of Sneed’s riders was to run on to you?  You’d sure need help.”

“That’s just it!  Supposin’ they did?  And supposin’ they took a crack at us, they might git you—­for you sure look man-size, a little piece off.”

Jimmy grinned at the compliment, but compliments could not alter his purpose.  “I got my ole twenty-two loaded,” he asserted hopefully.

“Then you just ride back and help Mr. Bartley take care of the hosses.  He ain’t much of a hand with stock.”

“Can’t I go with you?”

“Not this trip, son.  But I’ll tell you somethin’.  Mr. Bartley, down there, said to me this mornin’ that he was goin’ to buy you a brand-new twenty-two rifle, one of these days:  mebby after we locate the hosses.  You better have a talk with him about it.”

This was a temptation to ride back:  yet Jimmy had set his heart on going with his father.  And his father had said that he was simply going to ride up to Sneed’s place and have a talk with him.  Jimmy wanted to hear that talk.  He knew that his father meant business when he had told him to go back.

“All right for you!” said Jimmy finally.  And he reined his pony round and rode back down the trail sullenly, his black hat pulled over his eyes, and his small back very straight and stiff.

Cheyenne watched him until the brush of the lower levels intervened.  Then Cheyenne began the ascent, his eye alert, his mind upon the task ahead.  When Little Jim realized that his father was so far into the timber that the trail below was shut from view, he reined his pony round again and began to climb the grade, slowly, this time, for fear that he might overtake his father too soon.