“Rather than squeal on the bunch. There's no other reason in God's world why you'd make me an offer like that. I ain't a fool quite, if my head does run up to a peak.” Bud chewed his lip, whittled, and finally threw the splinter away. When he turned toward Eddie his eyes were shiny. “Kid, you're breaking your sister's heart, following this trail. I'd like to see you give her a chance to speak your name without blinking back tears. I'd like to see her smile all the way from her dimples to her eyes when she thinks of you. That's why I made the offer--that and because I think you'd earn your wages.” Eddie looked at him, looked away, staring vacantly at the wall. His eyelashes were blinking very fast, his lip began to tremble. “You--I--I never wanted to--I ain't worth saving--oh, hell! I never had a chance before--” He dropped sidewise on the bed, buried his face in his arms and sobbed hoarsely, like the boy he was. CHAPTER NINETEEN: BUD RIDES THROUGH CATROCK AND LOSES MARIAN “You'll have to show me the trail, pardner,” said Bud when they were making their way cautiously out of town by way of the tin can suburbs. “I could figure out the direction all right, and make it by morning; but seeing you grew up here, I'll let you pilot.” “You'll have to tell me where you want to go, first,” said Eddie with a good deal of sullenness still in his voice. “Little Lost.” Without intending to do so, Bud put a good deal of meaning in his voice. Eddie did not say anything, but veered to the right, climbing higher on the slope than Bud would have gone. “We can take the high trail,” he volunteered when they stopped to rest the horses. “It takes up over the summit and down Burroback Valley. It's longer, but the stage road edges along the Sinks and--it might be rough going, after we get down a piece.” “How about the side-hill trail, through Catrock Peak?” Eddie turned sharply. In the starlight Bud was watching him, wondering what he was thinking. “How'd you get next to any side-hill trail?” Eddie asked after a minute. “You been over it?” “I surely have. And I expect to go again, to-nigh! A young fellow about your size is going to act a pilot, and get me to Little Lost as quick as possible. It'll be daylight at that.” “If you got another day coming, it better be before daylight we get there,” Eddie retorted glumly. H hesitated, turned his horse and led the way down the slope, angling down away from the well-travelled trail over the summit of Gold Gap. That hesitation told Bud, without words, how tenuous was his hold upon Eddie. He possessed sufficient imagination to know that his own carefully discipline past, sheltered from actual contact with evil, had given him little enough by which to measure the soul of a youth like Eddie Collier.