They all went together. A few minutes later, they came upon Gallwey sitting in the grass. He had lost his hat, and there was a good deal of dust and grass and leaves on him. He sat still, smiling somewhat feebly. "I don't suppose my appearance is exactly prepossessing, but that's not my fault, and I'm unusually pleased to see you, boys," he said. "As you may have surmised, the Sergeant's little plan didn't quite work out as it should have done. I'll try to tell you about it if you'll take these ropes off." Sergeant Grier, coming up at this juncture, made several observations that are unrecordable, but after the first outbreak, he put a check on his temper. "They have come out ahead again," he said. "Well, it's quite likely we'll get straight with them yet, and 'bout all we can do now is to pick up their trail." But they could find no trail, for, as little dew falls on a cloudy night, the grass was dry and dusty by sunrise. They spent most of that day riding about in twos and threes, but nobody at the scattered farms where they made inquiries had seen a single outlaw. They and their whisky had apparently vanished altogether. CHAPTER XXIV LELAND MAKES SURE The nights were growing longer, dusk was creeping up from the eastward across the leagues of whitened grass an hour earlier than it had done when they cut the hay. Leland stood outside the homestead door with a few newly opened letters in his hand. The waggon of the man who had brought them was just then lurching over the crest of the rise, and Carrie stood watching it, near her husband's side. His face was a trifle sombre, but he smiled when she glanced at him inquiringly. "From my broker in Winnipeg," he said. "He doesn't know what to make of the market, and I can't blame him. Wheat's lower than I ever remember it, but the bears are still working their hardest to hammer prices down. In a month or so they'll have the whole wheat of the West flung into the market to make it easier for them; but they don't seem to have it quite so much their own way as I had expected. One could almost fancy that somebody was buying quietly. Anyway, there's a man willing to take most of my crop off me, when it's ready, at a little under to-day's nominal figure. You see, the Prospect hard red's first-grade for milling." "If you sold, how would you stand?" asked Carrie. "Very close to ruin. The cattle run would certainly have to go, but that wouldn't count so much. It's less than half stocked now." "Why can't you hold?" "The trouble is that all accounts must be met at harvest, and I've got to have at least five thousand dollars to wipe out the most pressing ones. The rest might be carried over at a stiff interest. Then there are wages, harvesting and threshing. Besides, if I held the grain up, I'd be taking a big risk. It may go down another two or three cents or even more, when every man west of Winnipeg rushes his crop in, and that would turn me out upon the prairie."