“I aim to lay low, all right.  And I aim to come up a-shootin’ if the—­”

“Yore dead right, Bill.  Night-ridin’ ’s bad enough when a feller rides his own hawse.  It’d need some darn smooth explainin’ then.  But when a man takes an’ saddles up another feller’s hawse—­”

“I kin see his objeck in that,” Bill said.  “He had a long trail to foller, an’ he tuk the hawse that’d git ’im there and back the quickest.  Now what I’d admire to know is, who was the rider, an’ where was he goin’ to?  D’ you happen to miss anybody las’ night, Bud?”

“Me?  Thunder!  Bill, you know damn well I wouldn’t miss my own beddin’ roll if it was drug out from under me!”

“Same here,” mourned Bill.  “Ridin’ bronks shore does make a feller ready for the hay.  Me, I died soon as my head hit my piller.”

“Mary V, she musta hit out plumb early this morning,” Bud observed gropingly.  “She was saddled and gone when I come to the c’rel at sun-up.  Yuh might ast her if she seen anybody, Bill.  Chances is she wouldn’t, but they’s no harm askin’.”

“I will,” Bill said sourly.  “Any devilment that’s goin’ on around this outfit, Mary V’s either doin’ it er gettin’ next to it so’s she kin hold a club over whoever done it.  She mebby mighta saw him—­if she was a mind to tell.”

“Yeah—­that shore is Mary V,” Bud agreed heartily.  “Bawl yuh out quick enough if they’s anything yuh want kep’ under cover, and then turnin’ right around and makin’ a clam ashamed of itself for a mouthy cuss if yuh want to know anything right bad.  Bound she’d go with us getherin’ hosses when she wasn’t needed nor wanted, and now when we’re short-handed, she ain’t able to see us no more a-tall when we start off.  You’ll have to git upon ’er blind side some way, Bill, er she won’t tell, if she does know who rode Jake.”

“Blind side?” Bill snorted.  “Mary V ain’t got no blind side ’t I ever seen.”

“And that’s right too.  Ain’t it the truth!  I don’t guess, Bill, yuh better let on to Mary V nothin’ about it.  Then they’s a chance she may tell yuh jest to spite the other feller, if she does happen to know.  A slim chance—­but still she might.”

“Slim chance is right!” Bill stated with feeling.

During this colloquy Mary V’s ears might have burned, had Mary V not been too thoroughly engrossed with her own emotions to be sensitive to the emotions of others.

Mary V was pounding along toward Black Ridge—­or Snake Ridge, as some preferred to call it.  She was tired, of course.  Her head ached, and more than once she slowed Tango to a walk while she debated with herself whether it was really worth while to wear herself completely out in the cause of righteousness.

Mary V did not in the least suspect just how righteous was the cause.  How could she know, for instance, that Rolling R horses were being selected just as carefully on the southern range as they were to the north, since even that shrewd range man, her father, certainly had no suspicion that the revolutionists farther to the east in Mexico would presently begin to ride fresh mounts with freshly blotched brands?  He had vaguely feared a raid, perhaps, but even that fear was not strong enough to impel him to keep more than one man at Sinkhole.