Pete, perhaps influenced by Montoya’s example, always wore a high-crowned black sombrero.  Andy’s hat was the usual gray.  In the excitement of leaving, Pete had not thought of that; but as he rode, he suspected Andy’s motive, and glanced back.  But Andy was not following, or if he were, he was riding slowly.

Meanwhile Andy cheerfully put himself in the way of assisting Pete to escape.  He knew the country and thought he knew where Pete was headed for.  Before nightfall a posse would be riding the high country hunting the slayer of Gary.  They would look for a cowboy wearing a black sombrero.  Realizing the risk that he ran, and yet as careless of that risk as though he rode to a fiesta, Young Andy deliberately turned back to where Gary lay—­he had not yet been to that spot—­and, dismounting, picked up Pete’s rope.  He glanced at Gary, shivered, and swung to his horse.  Riding so that his trail would be easy to read he set off toward the open country, east.  The fact that he had no food with him, and that the country was arid and that water was scarce, did not trouble him.  All he hoped for was to delay or mislead the posse long enough to enable Pete to reach the southern desert.  There Pete might have one chance in twenty of making his final escape.  Perhaps it was a foolish thing to do, but Andy White, inspired by a motive of which there is no finer, did not stop to reason about it.  “He that giveth his life for a friend . . .”  Andy knew nothing of such a quotation.  He was riding into the desert, quite conscious of the natural hazards of the trail, and keen to the possibilities that might follow in the form of an excited posse not too discriminating, in their eagerness to capture an outlaw, yet he rode with a light heart.  After all, Pete was not guilty of murder.  He had but defended his own life.  Andy’s heart was light because of the tang of adventure, and a certain appreciation of what a disappointed posse might feel and express—­and because Romance ran lightly beside him, heartening him on his way; Romance, whose ears are deaf to all moral considerations and whose eyes see only the true adventurer, be he priest or pirate; Romance whose eyes are blind to those who fear to dare.

CHAPTER XVII

A FALSE TRAIL

“Sure he’s dead!” reiterated Cotton.  “Didn’t I see them two holes plumb through him and the blood soakin’ his shirt when I turned him over?  If I’d ‘a’ had my gun on me that Young Pete would be right side of Steve, right now!  But I couldn’t do nothin’ without a gun.  Pete Annersley was plumb scared.  That’s why he killed Steve.  Jest you gimme a gun and watch me ride him down!  I aim to settle with that Jay.”

Cotton was talking to Houck of the T-Bar-T, blending fact and fiction in a blustering attempt to make himself believe he had played the man.  During his long, foot-weary journey to the ranch he had roughly invented this speech and tried to memorize it.  Through repetition he came to believe that he was telling the truth.  Incidentally he had not paused to catch up his horse, which was a slight oversight, considering the trail from the Blue to his home ranch.