“Where are you going?” asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward the horses.

“Me, oh, A’m trail long behine.  Mebbe-so two kin see better’n wan.”

A few minutes later he too was swallowed up in the timber at the head of the trail, and Alice and Endicott returned to the rim-rocks and from a place of concealment watched with breathless interest the course of the lone horseman.

After satisfying himself he was unobserved, the Texan pushed from the shelter of the rocks at the foot of the trail and, circling the butte, struck into a coulee that led south-eastward into the bad lands.  A mile away he crossed a ridge and gained another coulee which he followed northward.

“If he’s headin’ into the bad lands I’ll meet up with him, an’ if he’s just skirtin’ ’em, our trails’ll cross up here a piece,” he reasoned as his horse carried him up the dry ravine at a steady walk.  Presently he slanted into a steep side coulee that led upward to the crest of a long flat ridge.  For a moment he paused as his eyes swept the landscape and then suddenly a quarter of a mile away a horseman appeared out of another coulee.  He, too, paused and, catching sight of the Texan, dug in his spurs and came toward him at a run.

The cowboy’s brows drew into a puzzled frown as he studied the rapidly approaching horseman.  “Well, I’ll be damned!” he grinned, “ain’t he the friendly young spirit!  His ma had ought to look after him better’n that an’ teach him some manners.  The idea of any one chargin’ up to a stranger that way in the bad lands!  One of these days he’s a-goin’ to run up again’ an abrupt foreshortin’ of his reckless young career.”  The rider was close now and the Texan recognized a self-important young jackass who had found work with one of the smaller outfits.

“It’s that mouthy young short-horn from the K 2,” he muttered, disgustedly.  “Well, he’ll sure cut loose an’ earful of small talk.  He hates himself, like a peacock.”  The cowboy pulled up his horse with a vicious jerk that pinked the foam at the animal’s mouth and caused a little cloud of dust to rise into the air.  Then, for a moment, he sat and stared.

“If you was in such a hell of a hurry,” drawled the Texan, “you could of rode around me.  There’s room on either side.”

The cowboy found his voice.  “Well, by gosh, if it ain’t Tex!  How they stackin’, old hand?”

“Howdy,” replied the Texan, dryly.

“You take my advice an’ lay low here in the bad lands an’ they won’t ketch you.  I said it right in the Long Horn yeste’day mornin’—­they was a bunch of us lappin’ ’em up.  Old Pete was there—­an’ I says to Pete, I says, ’Take it from me they might ketch all the rest of ’em but they won’t never ketch Tex!’ An’ Pete, he says, ’You’re just right there, Joe,’ an’ then he takes me off to one side, old Pete does, an’ he says, ‘Joe,’ he says, ‘I’ve got a ticklish job to be done, an’ I ain’t got another man I kin bank on puttin’ it through.’”