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 so damn dark he couldn't find it. We camped there, and started on at daylight. A little way along we hit your trail."

"But how in the seven kingdoms did you know it was mine?"

"The sheriff knew by the tracks it was the same bunch of horses them fellers run off, and he knew they wouldn't be headin' 'em north, not all together and right away, anyhow. He said you'd got 'em away from them fellers, and we knew by the tracks made since the rain that they was after your skelp, old feller. Simple as the snoot on your face. So we bucked into 'er and come on hell-bent, I'm here to say!"

"You were damn well welcome!" Tom said fervently.

"Don't mention it," Wallace requested lightly, dismissing all thought of obligation with the words.

They overtook Sheriff Treadwell about five miles from the scene of the skirmish, as he called it. He was waiting for them, holding a riderless horse by the reins. There was nobody else around. Off a little way the horses grazed beside the trail, all of them there, according to Tom's hasty estimate. Sheriff Treadwell said they were still about three miles inside the Nation.

"It's nice to ketch them fellers over the line this way," he said. "It saves the county a lot of expense."

Wallace said they'd hit one of Coburn's cow-camps about nine or thirteen miles north of the line; they could make it there by chuck-time, which would be a handy hour, as far as he was concerned, personal and private, to arrive.

They got the horses under way, the sheriff's weather eye on the saddled one running with them. He asked no