This had already occurred to Dave as a possibility.  “Any proof?” he asked quietly.

“A-plenty.  I been ridin’ on the point all day.  Three-four times we cut trail of five horses.  Two of the five are bein’ ridden.  My Four-Bits hoss has got a broken front hoof.  So has one of the five.”

“Movin’ fast, are they?”

“You’re damn whistlin’.  They’re hivin’ off for parts unknown.  Malapi first off, looks like.  They got friends there.”

“Steelman and his outfit will protect them while they hunt cover and make a getaway.  Miller mentioned Denver before the race—­said he was figurin’ on goin’ there.  Maybe—­”

“He was probably lyin’.  You can’t tell.  Point is, we’ve got to get busy.  My notion is we’d better make a bee-line for Malapi right away,” proposed Bob.

“We’ll travel all night.  No use wastin’ any more time.”

Dug Doble received their decision sourly.  “It don’t tickle me a heap to be left short-handed because you two boys have got an excuse to get to town quicker.”

Hart looked him straight in the eye.  “Call it an excuse if you want to.  We’re after a pair of shorthorn crooks that stole our horses.”

The foreman flushed angrily.  “Don’t come bellyachin’ to me about yore broomtails.  I ain’t got ’em.”

“We know who’s got ’em,” said Dave evenly.  “What we want is a wage check so as we can cash it at Malapi.”

“You don’t get it,” returned the big foreman bluntly.  “We pay off when we reach the end of the drive.”

“I notice you paid yore brother and Miller when we gave an order for it,” Hart retorted with heat.

“A different proposition.  They hadn’t signed up for this drive like you boys did.  You’ll get what’s comin’ to you when I pay off the others.  You’ll not get it before.”

The two riders retired sulkily.  They felt it was not fair, but on the trail the foreman is an autocrat.  From the other riders they borrowed a few dollars and gave in exchange orders on their pay checks.

Within an hour they were on the road.  Fresh horses had been roped from the remuda and were carrying them at an even Spanish jog-trot through the night.  The stars came out, clear and steady above a ghostly world at sleep.  The desert was a place of mystery, of vast space peopled by strange and misty shapes.

The plain stretched vaguely before them.  Far away was the thin outline of the range which enclosed the valley.  The riders held their course by means of that trained sixth sense of direction their occupation had developed.

They spoke little.  Once a coyote howled dismally from the edge of the mesa.  For the most part there was no sound except the chuffing of the horses’ movements and the occasional ring of a hoof on the baked ground.

The gray dawn, sifting into the sky, found them still traveling.  The mountains came closer, grew more definite.  The desert flamed again, dry, lifeless, torrid beneath a sky of turquoise.  Dust eddies whirled in inverted cones, wind devils playing in spirals across the sand.  Tablelands, mesas, wide plains, desolate lava stretches.  Each in turn was traversed by these lean, grim, bronzed riders.