Brand Blotters

Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. "Did you hear that, Buck?"

"What--what do you reckon it was, Jeff?"

Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.

The outlaws took counsel of their terror. They were hardy, desperate men,

afraid of nothing mortal under the sun. But the dormant superstition in

them rose to their throats. Fearfully they wheeled and gave their horses

the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.

He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes

fell silent. "We'll be moving," he announced to his prisoner.

For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack

had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The

stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the

darkness grew with the passing hours. At length Flatray had to call a

halt.

"We'll camp here till morning," he announced when they reached a grassy

park.

The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the

darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no

sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a

cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not

light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A

quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.

"Time to hit the trail."

The outlaw murmured sleepily, "How's that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand

apiece!"

"Wake up! We've got to vamose out of here."

Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray

sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had

cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master,

and was cowed.