“Dat girl she dam’ fine ’oman.  She got, w’at you call, de nerve.”

“It’s a good thing it ain’t daytime,” growled the Texan surlily, “or that there tongue of yourn would get sun-burnt the way you keep it a-goin’.”

Upon the crest of a high foothill that is a spur of Tiger Ridge, Tex swerved abruptly from the trail and headed straight for the mountains that loomed out of the darkness.  On and on he rode, keeping wherever possible to the higher levels to avoid the fences of the nesters whose fields and pastures followed the windings of the creek bottoms.

Higher and higher they climbed and rougher grew the way.  The scrub willows gave place to patches of bull pine and the long stretches of buffalo grass to ugly bare patches of black rock.  In and out of the scrub timber they wended, following deep coulees to their sources and crossing steep-pitched divides into other coulees.  The fences of the nesters were left far behind and following old game trails, or no trails at all, the Texan pushed unhesitatingly forward.  At last, just as the dim outlines of the mountains were beginning to assume definite shape in the first faint hint of the morning grey, he pulled into a more extensive patch of timber than any they had passed and dismounting motioned the others to the ground.

While the Texan prepared breakfast, Bat busied himself with the blankets and when the meal was finished Alice found a tent awaiting her, which the half-breed had constructed by throwing the pack-tarp over a number of light poles whose ends rested upon a fallen tree-trunk.  Never in her life, thought the girl, as she sank into the foot-thick mattress of pine boughs that underlay the blankets, had a bed felt so comfortable, so absolutely satisfying.  But her conscious enjoyment of its comfort was short-lived for the sounds of men and horses, and the low soughing of the wind in the pine-tops blended into one, and she slept.  Endicott, too, fell asleep almost as soon as he touched the blankets which the half-breed had spread for him a short distance back from the fire, notwithstanding the scant padding of pine needles that interposed between him and mother earth.

Beside the fire the half-breed helped Tex wash the dishes, the while he regarded the cowpuncher shrewdly as if to fathom what was passing in his mind.

“Back in Wolf Rivaire, dey t’ink de pilgrim git hang.  W’at for dey mak’ de posse?” he asked at length.  The Texan finished washing the tin plates, dried his hands, and rolled a cigarette, which he lighted deliberately with a brand from the fire.

“Bat,” he said with a glance toward the sleeping Endicott, “me an’ you has be’n right good friends for quite a spell.  You recollect them four bits, back in Las Vegas—­” The half-breed interrupted him with a grin and reaching into his shirt front withdrew a silver half-dollar which depended from his neck by a rawhide thong.

“Oui, A’m don’ git mooch chance to ferget dat four bit.”