“Shore is a night-rider in this outfit,” he summed up.  “He shore did pick himself a top hoss, and he shore rode the tail off’n ’im just about.  Me, I’m crazy to know who done it.”

Bill had to hurry, so he left the matter to simmer for the present.  But that did not mean that Bill would wear “blinders,” or that he would sleep with his head under his tarp for fear of finding out what black-hearted renegade had sacrilegiously borrowed Jake.  Black-hearted renegade, by the way, was but the dwindling to mild epithets after Bill’s more colorful vocabulary had been worn to rags by repetition.

All unconsciously Mary V had set another man in the outfit to sweating his brain and swearing to himself.  Tex would not sleep sound again until he knew who had taken to night-riding—­on a horse of Jake’s quality.  Tex would have believed that Bill himself was the man, had he not read the look on Bill’s face while he studied the marks of hard riding.  Tex was no fool, else his income would have been restricted to what he could earn by the sweat of his skin.  Bill had been unconscious of scrutiny when Tex had caught that look, and Bill had furthermore betrayed suspicion when Tex spoke to him about the horse.  Bill was mad, which Tex took as proof that Bill had lain in his bed all night.  Besides, Bill would hardly have left Jake in the corral where he could have free access to the water trough after such a ride as that must have been.  Some one had brought Jake home in such a hurry that he had merely pulled his saddle and bridle off and—­hustled back to bed, perhaps.

Tex was worried, and for a very good reason.  He had been abroad the night before, dodging off down the draw to the west until he could circle the ridge and ride south.  He had been too shrewd to ride a fagged horse home and leave him in the corral to tell the tale of night prowling, however.  He had taken the time to catch a fresh horse from the pasture, tie his own horse in a secluded place until his return, and re-saddle it to ride back to the ranch, careful not to moisten a hair.  He felt a certain contempt for the stupidity that would leave such evidence as Jake, but for all that he was worried.  Being the scoundrel he was, he jumped to the conclusion that some one had been spying on him.  It was a mystery that bred watchfulness and much cogitation.

“What’s that about some geeser riding Jake las’ night?” Bud, riding slowly until Bill overtook him, asked curiously, with the freedom of close friendship.  “Tex was saying something about it to Curley when they rode past me, but I didn’t ketch it all.  Anything in it?”

Bill cleared his mind again with blistering epithets before he answered Bud directly.  “Jake was rode, and he was rode hard.  It was a cool night—­and I know what it takes to put that hawse in a lather.  I wisht I’d a got to feel a few saddle blankets this morning!  The—­” Bill cussed himself out of breath.

When he stopped, Bud took up the refrain.  It was not his horse, of course, but an unwritten law of the range had been broken, and that was any honest rider’s affair.  Besides, Bill was a pal of Bud’s.  “Hangin’’s too good for ’im, whoever done it,” he finished vindictively.  “I’d lay low, if I was you, Bill.  Mebby he’ll git into the habit, and you kin ketch ’im at it.”