The Norwegian laughed.  “Ay bane t’ink we do some wadin’.”

They swung off to the right, and a little later splashed through the water for a few minutes and came out into a spreading valley beyond the sheer walls of the retreat they had left.  Taking the road again, they traveled faster than they had been able to do before.

“Who left the valley yesterday for Gimlet Butte, Sig?” Howard asked, after it was light enough to see.  “I notice tracks of two horses.”

“Ay bane vondering.  Ay t’ink mebbe West over——­”

“I reckon not.  This ain’t the track of his big bay.  Must ‘a’ been yesterday, too, because it rained the night before.”

For some hours they could see occasionally the tracks of the two horses, but eventually lost them where two trails forked.

“Taking the Sweetwater cutout to the Butte, I reckon,” Howard surmised.

They traveled all day, except for a stop about ten o’clock for breakfast, and another late in the afternoon, to rest the horses.  At night, they put up at a ranch house, and were in the saddle again early in the morning.  Before noon, they struck a telephone line, and Fraser called up Brandt at a ranch.

“Hello!  This Sheriff Brandt?  Lieutenant Fraser, of the Texas Rangers, is talking.  I’m on my way to town with a prisoner.  We’re at Christy’s, now.  There will, perhaps, be an attempt to take him from us.  I’ll explain the circumstances later. ...  Yes....  Yes....  We can hold him, I think, but there may be trouble....  Yes, that’s it.  We have no legal right to detain him, I suppose....  That’s what I was going to suggest.  Better send about four men to meet us.  We’ll come in on the Blasted Pine road.  About nine to-night, I should think.”

As they rode easily along the dusty road, the Texan explained his plan to his friends.

“We don’t want any trouble with Yorky’s crowd.  We ain’t any of us deputies, and my commission doesn’t run in Wyoming, of course.  My notion is to lie low in the hills two or three hours this afternoon, and give Brandt a chance to send his men out to meet us.  The responsibility will be on them, and we can be sworn in as deputies, too,”

They rested in a grassy draw, about fifteen miles from town, and took the trail again shortly after dark.  It was an hour later that Fraser, who had an extraordinary quick ear, heard the sound of men riding toward them.  He drew his party quickly into the shadows of the hills, a little distance from the road.

They could hear voices of the advancing party, and presently could make out words.

“I tell you, they’ve got to come in on this road, Slim,” one of the men was saying dogmatically.  “We’re bound to meet up with them.  That’s all there is to it.”

“Yorky,” whispered Howard, in the ranger’s ear.

They rode past in pairs, six of them in all.  As chance would have it, Siegfried’s pony, perhaps recognizing a friend among those passing, nickered shrilly its greeting.  Instantly, the riders drew up.