“Let's begin picking it, then,” said Bud, and got up, reaching for his bridle. By devious ways it was that Eddie led them out of that sinister country surrounding the Sinks. In the beginning Bud and Jerry exchanged glances, and looked at their guns, believing that it would be through Catrock Canyon they would have to ride. Eddie, riding soberly in the lead, had yet a certain youthful sense of his importance. “They'll never think of following yuh this way, unless old Pop Truman gits back in time to tell 'em I'm travelling with yuh,” he observed once when they had penetrated beyond the neighborhood of caves and blow-holes and were riding safely down a canyon that offered few chances of their being observed save from the front, which did not concern them. “I guess you don't know old Pop is about the ringeader of the Catrockers. Er he was, till he began to git kinda childish about hoarding money, and then Dave stepped in. And Mr. Birnie, I guess you'd have been dead when you first came there, if it hadn't been that Dave and Pop wanted to give you a chance to get a lot of money off of Jeff's bunch. Lew was telling how you kept cleaning up, and he said right along that they was taking too much risk having you around. Lew said he bet you was a detective. Are you, Mr. Birnie?” Bud was riding with his shoulders sagged forward, his thoughts with Marian--wherever she was. He had been convinced that she was not at Little Lost, that she had started for Laramie. But now that he was away from that evil spot his doubts returned. What if she were still in the neighborhood--what if they found her? Memory of Honey's vindictiveness made him shiver, Honey was the kind of woman who would kill. “I am, from now on, kid,” he said despondently. “We're going to ride till we find your sister. And if those hell-hounds got her--” “They didn't, from the way Honey talked,” Jerry comforted. “We'll find her at Laramie, don't you ever think we won't!” CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: TRAILS END At the last camp, just north of the Platte, Bud's two black sheep balked. Bud himself, worn by sleepless nights and long hours in the saddle, turned furiously when Jerry announced that he guessed he and Ed wouldn't go any farther. “Well, damn you both for ungrateful hounds!” grated Bud, hurt to the quick. “I hope you don't think I brought you this far to help hold me in the saddle; I made it north alone, without any mishap. I think I could have come back all right. But if you want to quit here, all right. You can high-tail it back to your outlaws--” “Well, if you go 'n put it that way!” Jerry expostulated, lifting both hands high in the air in a vain attempt to pull the situation toward the humorous. “You're a depity sheriff, and you got the drop.” He grinned, saw that Bud's eyes were still hard and his mouth unyielding, and lowered his hands, looking crestfallen as a kicked pup that had tried to be friendly.