Van dismounted from his pony’s back and picked up one of his hoofs.

“Worn down pretty flat,” he told the animal.  “Perhaps if I walk we can make it.”  He started on foot up the tinkling way, watching the broncho with solicitude.

Suvy followed obediently, but the pointed rocks played havoc with his feet.  He lurched, in attempting to right his foot on one that turned, and the long lassoo, secured to the saddle, flopped out, fell back, and made him jump.  Van halted as before.  The convict was barely fifty yards away.  His pistol was leveled, but he waited for a deadlier aim, a shorter shot.

“Nope!  We’ll have to climb the hill,” Van decided reluctantly.  “You’re a friend of mine, Suvy, and even if you weren’t, you’d have to last to get back.”  He turned his back on death, unwittingly, to spare the horse he loved.

Delayed no less than an hour by this enforced retreat, he patiently led the broncho back to the opening of the pass, and, still on foot, led the steep way up over the mountain.

Barger rose up and cursed himself for not having risked a shot.  He dared not attempt a dash upon his man; he could not know where Van might again be intercepted; he was helpless, baffled, enraged.  Half starved, keenly alive only in his instinct to accomplish his revenge, the creature was more like a hunted, retaliating animal than like a man.  He had sworn to even the score with Van Buren; he was not to be deflected from his course.  But to get his man here was no longer possible.  The horse Beth had lost, now in the convict’s possession, was all but famished for water, not to mention food.  There was nothing to choose but retreat towards the river, to the northward, where the mountains might yet afford an ambush as Van was returning home.

Far away in the mountains, at the “Laughing Water” claim, while the sun was setting on a scene of labors, all but concluded for the day, the group of surveyors, with Lawrence in charge, appeared along the southern ridge.

Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were still in the water by the sluices.  They were grimed, soiled with perspiration, wearied by the long, hard day of toil.  Shovel in hand old Gettysburg discovered the men with an instrument who trekked along the outside edge of the claim.  Chain-man, rod-man, and Lawrence with his shining theodolite, set on its three slender legs, they were silhouetted sharply against the evening sky.  Their movements and their presence here were beyond the partners’ comprehension.  It was Gettysburg who climbed up the slope, and anchored himself in their path.

“What you doin’?” he said to the rod-man presently, when that tired individual approached and continued on his way.

“What does it look like—­playing checkers?” said the man.  “Can’t the Government do nuthin’—­run no county line ner nuthin’ without everybody sittin’ up to notice?”

No less than fifty men they had met that day had questioned what the Government was doing.  The “county line” suggestion had been the only hint vouchsafed—­and that had sufficed to allay the keenest suspicion.