“How far will he have to ride?”

“Oh, ’bout three hundred miles as the crow flies, a little west of north, and the better part of the distance, they tell me, it’s almighty rough country for night work.  But then Murphy, he knows the way all right.”

Hampton turned toward the door, feeling fairly sick from disappointment.  The operator stood regarding him curiously, a question on his lips.

“Sorry you didn’t come along a little earlier,” he said, genially.  “Do you know Murphy?”

“I ’m not quite certain.  Did you happen to notice a peculiar black scar on the back of his right hand?”

“Sure; looks like the half of a pear.  He said it was powder under the skin.”

A new look of reviving determination swept into Hampton’s gloomy eyes—­beyond doubt this must be his man.

“How many horses did he have?”

“Two.”

“Did you overhear him say anything definite about his plans for the trip?”

“What, him?  He never talks, that fellow.  He can’t do nothing but sputter if he tries.  But I wrote out his orders, and they give him to the twenty-fifth to make the Big Horn.  That’s maybe something like fifty miles a day, and he’s most likely to keep his horses fresh just as long as possible, so as to be good for the last spurt through the hostile country.  That’s how I figure it, and I know something about scouting.  You was n’t planning to strike out after him, was you?”

“I might risk it if I only thought I could overtake him within two days; my business is of some importance.”

“Well, stranger, I should reckon you might do that with a dog-gone good outfit.  Murphy ’s sure to take things pretty easy to-day, and he’s almost certain to follow the old mining trail as far as the ford over the Belle Fourche, and that’s plain enough to travel.  Beyond that point the devil only knows where he will go, for then is when his hard ridin’ begins.”

The moment the operator mentioned that odd scar on Murphy’s hand, every vestige of hesitation vanished.  Beyond any possibility of doubt he was on the right scent this time.  Murphy was riding north upon a mission as desperate as ever man was called upon to perform.  The chance of his coming forth alive from that Indian-haunted land was, as the operator truthfully said, barely one out of a hundred.  Hampton thought of this.  He durst not venture all he was so earnestly striving after—­love, reputation, honor—­to the chance of a stray Sioux bullet.  No! and he remembered Naida again, her dark, pleading eyes searching his face.  To the end, to the death if need were, he would follow!

The memory of his old plains craft would not permit any neglect of the few necessaries for the trip.  He bought without haggling over prices, but insisted on the best.  So it was four in the afternoon when he finally struck into the trail leading northward.  This proved at first a broad, plainly marked path, across the alkali plain.  He rode a mettlesome, half-broken bronco, a wicked-eyed brute, which required to be conquered twice within the first hour of travel; a second and more quiet animal trailed behind at the end of a lariat, bearing the necessary equipment.  Hampton forced the two into a rapid lope, striving to make the most possible out of the narrow margin of daylight remaining.