“No rush a-tall,” Dave assured him cheerfully.  “We got all the time there is.  Best thing to do is to loaf along and take it easy.”

“But they’ll be on our trail as soon as they know we’ve gone.  They’ll force Miss Rutherford to tell which way we came.”

Dingwell grinned.  “Son, did you ever look into that girl’s eyes?  They look right at you, straight and unafraid.  The Huerfano Park outfit will have a real merry time getting her to tell anything she doesn’t want to.  When she gets her neck bowed, I’ll bet she’s some sot.  Might as well argue with a government mule.  She’d make a right interesting wife for some man, but he’d have to be a humdinger to hold his end up—­six foot of man, lots of patience, and sense enough to know he’d married a woman out of ’steen thousand.”

Young Beaudry was not contemplating matrimony.  His interest just now was centered in getting as far from the young woman and her relatives as possible.

“When young Rutherford finds he has been sold, there will be the deuce to pay,” urged Roy.

“Will there?  I dunno.  Old man Rutherford ain’t going to be so awfully keen to get us back on his hands.  We worried him a heap.  Miss Beulah lifted two heavy weights off’n his mind.  I’m one and you’re the other.  O’ course, he’ll start the boys out after us to square himself with Tighe and Meldrum.  He’s got to do that.  They’re sure going to be busy bees down in the Huerfano hive.  The Rutherford boys are going to do a lot of night-riding for quite some time.  But I expect Hal won’t give them orders to bring us in dead or alive.  There is no premium on our pelts.”

Roy spent a nervous half-hour before his friend would let him mount again—­and he showed it.  The shrewd eyes of the old cattleman appraised him.  Already he guessed some of the secrets of this young man’s heart.

Dave swung to the left into the hills so as to get away from the beaten trails after they had crossed the pass.  He rode slowly, with a careful eye upon his companion.  Frequently he stopped to rest in spite of Roy’s protests.

Late in the afternoon they came to a little mountain ranch owned by a nester who had punched cattle for Dave in the old days.  Now he was doing a profitable business himself in other men’s calves.  He had started with a branding-iron and a flexible conscience.  He still had both of them, together with a nice little bunch of cows that beat the world’s records for fecundity.

It was not exactly the place Dingwell would have chosen to go into hiding, but he had to take what he could get.  Roy, completely exhausted, was already showing a fever.  He could not possibly travel farther.

With the casual confidence that was one of his assets Dave swung from his horse and greeted the ranchman.

“’Lo, Hart!  Can we roost here to-night?  My friend got thrown and hurt his shoulder.  He’s all in.”