“A roan, mebbe,” Tom put in quickly.

“You’ve said it, Tom—­a roan, and it looked to me like it was wounded.  There was blood all over the left flank.”

“O’ course Keller was riding it,” Purdy ventured.

“Rung the bell at the first shot,” Healy answered grimly.

“The son of a gun!”

“How long ago was it, Brill?” asked another.

“Must a-been two hours, anyhow.”

“No use us following them now, then.”

“No use.  They’ve gone to cover.”

They turned their horses and took the back trail.  The cow ponies scrambled down rocky slopes like cats, and up steep inclines with the agility of mountain goats.  The men rode in single file, and conversation was limited to disjointed fragments jerked out now and again.  After an hour’s rough going they reached the foothills, where they could ride two abreast.  As they drew nearer to the ranch country, now one and now another turned off with a shout of farewell.

Healy accepted Purdy’s invitation, and dismounted with him at the Fiddleback.  Already the first glimmering of dawn flickered faintly from the serrated range.  The men unsaddled, watered, fed, and then walked stiffly to the house.  Within five minutes both of them lay like logs, dead to the world, until Bess Purdy called them for breakfast, long after the rest of the family had eaten.

“What devilment you been leading paw into, Brill?” demanded Bess promptly when he appeared in the doorway.  “Dan says it was close to three when you got home.”

She flung her challenge at the young man with a flash of smiling teeth.  Bess was seventeen, a romp, very pretty, and hail-fellow-well-met with every range rider in a radius of thirty miles.

“We been looking for a beau for you, Bess,” Healy immediately explained.

Miss Purdy tossed her head.  “I can find one for myself, Brill Healy, and I don’t have to stay out till three to get him, either.”

“Come right to your door, do they?” he asked, as she helped him to the ham and eggs.

“Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t.”

“Well, here’s one come right in the middle of the night.  Somehow, I jest couldn’t make out to wait till morning, Bess.”

“Oh, you,” she laughed, with a demand for more of this sort of chaffing in her hazel eyes.

At this kind of rough give and take he was an adept.  After breakfast he stayed and helped her wash the dishes, romping with her the whole time in the midst of gay bursts of laughter and such repartee as occurred to them.

He found his young hostess so entertaining that he did not get away until the morning was half gone.  By the time he reached Seven Mile the sun was past the meridian, and the stage a lessening patch of dust in the distance.

Before he was well out of the saddle, Phyllis Sanderson was standing in the doorway of the store, with a question in her eyes.