“Jest a minute till I git my rope.”

“Nope, you stay here.  That Blue Smoke hoss knows me.  If he spots two of us comin’ he’s like to git excited and mebby bust his hobbles and light out.  I’ll ketch him all right.”

“Jest as you say, Pete.”

The sun was warming the air and it was pleasant to sit and watch the light clouds trail along the far horizon.  Andy leaned back against the cedar and rolled a cigarette.  He grinned as he recalled how Pete had called Gary at every turn, and yet had given the other no chance to find excuse for a quarrel.  Pete was certainly “a cool hand—­for a kid.”  White, several years Pete’s senior, always thought of him as not much more than a boy.

Meanwhile Pete, who knew every foot of ground on the homestead, trailed through the scrub toward the spring.  Down an occasional opening he could see the distant forest that edged the mesa, and once he thought he saw a horse’s head behind a bush, but it turned out to be the stub of a fallen tree.  The brush hid the cabin as he worked toward the timber.  Presently he discovered Blue Smoke’s tracks and followed them down into a shallow hollow where the brush was thick.  He wound in and out, keeping the tracks in sight and casually noting where the horse had stopped to graze.  Near the bottom of the hollow he heard voices.  He had been so intent on tracking the horse that he had forgotten Gary and Cotton.  The tracks led toward the voices.  Pete instinctively paused and listened, then shrugged his shoulders and stepped forward.  A thick partition of brush separated him from the unseen speaker.  Pete stopped midway in his stride.

“If you squat down here you can see the winder, right under this bush.  The moon was shinin’.  It was a plumb easy shot.  And it sure stopped homesteadin’ in this end of the country.”

Gary was speaking.  Pete drew a step nearer.

“You ain’t sayin’ who fired that shot,”—­and Cotton laughed obsequiously.

Pete stepped from behind the bush.  Gary was facing toward the cabin.  Cotton was squatting near by smoking a cigarette.

“Tell him,” said Pete.  “I want to know myself.”

“What’s it to you?” snarled Gary, and he stepped back.  Gary’s very attitude was a challenge.  Pete knew that he could not drop his rope and pull his own gun quick enough to save himself.  He saw Gary’s hand move almost imperceptibly toward his holster.

“I reckon I made a mistake,” said Pete slowly—­and he let the rope slip from his hand as though utterly unnerved.  “I—­I talked kind o’ quick,” he stammered.

“Well, you won’t make no more mistakes,” sneered Gary, and he dropped his hand to his gun.  “You want to know who plugged that old hoss-thief, Annersley, eh?  Well, what you goin’ to say when I tell you it was me?”