“Cayn’t be our camp-fire,” the squat man said aloud.  “I smothered that proper.”

“Them’s clouds,” pronounced Doble quickly.  “Clouds an’ some mist risin’ from the gulch.”

“I reckon,” agreed the other, with no sure conviction.  Doble must be right, of course.  No fire had been in evidence when they left the camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had cooked the biscuits.  Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like smoke.  He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure.  Fire in the chaparral now might do untold damage.

Shorty looked at Doble.  “If tha’s fire, Dug—­”

“It ain’t.  No chance,” snapped the ex-foreman.  “We’ll travel if you don’t feel called on to go back an’ stomp out the mist, Shorty,” he added with sarcasm.

The cowpuncher took the trail again.  Like many men, he was not proof against a sneer.  Dug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not want to make a fool of himself.  Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all day.

An hour later they rested their horses on the divide.  To the west lay Malapi and the plains.  Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks.  A long, bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays.  It was the bed of the new road already spiked with shining rails.

“I’m goin’ to town,” announced Doble.

Shorty looked at him in surprise.  “Wanta see yore picture, I reckon.  It’s on a heap of telegraph poles, I been told,” he said, grinning.

“To-day,” went on the ex-foreman stubbornly.

“Big, raw-boned guy, hook nose, leather face, never took no prize as a lady’s man, a wildcat in a rough-house, an’ sudden death on the draw,” extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward poster.

“I’ll lie in the chaparral till night an’ ride in after dark.”

With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea.  He was hungry for the fleshpots of Malapi.  If they dropped in late at night, stayed a few hours, and kept under cover, they could probably slip out of town undetected.  The recklessness of his nature found an appeal in the danger.

“Damfidon’t trail along, Dug.”

“Yore say-so about that.”

“Like to see my own picture on the poles.  Sawed-off li’l runt.  Straight black hair.  Some bowlegged.  Wears two guns real low.  Doncha monkey with him onless you’re hell-a-mile with a six-shooter.  One thousand dollars reward for arrest and conviction.  Same for the big guy.”

“Fellow that gets one o’ them rewards will earn it,” said Doble grimly.

“Goes double,” agreed Shorty.  “He’ll earn it even if he don’t live to spend it.  Which he’s liable not to.”

They headed their horses to the west.  As they drew down from the mountains they left the trail and took to the brush.  They wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus, bearing gradually to the north and into the foothills above the town.  When they reached Frio Canon they swung off into a timbered pocket debouching from it.  Here they unsaddled and lay down to wait for night.