Rogers had hardly ceased speaking when the outfit was on the move. There were eleven men, including Rogers; and they sent their horses leaping over the crest of the hill nearest them--dividing, as they reached the level on the other side with seemingly no previous arrangement, into two groups--one group going northeastward, toward the South Trail, and the other fading into the space that yawned between it and the point where the trail to the Star led downward into the big basin. * * * * * Haydon, holding hard to the pommel of the saddle, urging his horse along the trail that led up the valley, looked back whenever he reached a rise, his eyes searching the space behind him for the dread apparition that he expected momentarily. He knew that it would not be long before Morgan and Harlan would emerge from the ranchhouse to discover that he had escaped; and he knew, too, that they would suspect that he had gone to the Cache. He expected they would delay riding after him, however, until they searched for him in some of the buildings, and that delay, he hoped, would give him time to reach the Cache. He was handicapped by his useless arm--for it made riding awkward, and the numbness was stealing down his side, toward his leg. He paid little attention to the pain; indeed, he entirely forgot it in his frenzied eagerness to reach the Cache. More prominent in his brain at this minute than any other emotion was a dread of Billy Morgan. He had yielded to terror when Morgan had revealed his identity; but the terror he had felt then had not been nearly so paralyzing as that which was now upon him. His eyes were bulging as he rode; his lips were slavering, and he shuddered and cringed as he leaned over his horse's mane, urging him to greater effort--even though there were times when his lurches almost threw him out of the saddle. For his previous terror had been somewhat tempered with a doubt of Morgan's veracity. Even when he had seen Morgan reaching for his pistol he had felt the doubt--had felt that Morgan was not Morgan at all, but Woodward, perpetrating a grotesque joke. To be sure, when he had seen that Morgan really intended to kill him, he had been convinced that the man was in deadly earnest. It had been then that he had desperately twisted himself so that Morgan's bullet had not touched a vital spot. But now his terror had grown; it was a thing that had got into his soul--for he had had time to meditate over what Morgan's vengeance meant to him. It meant that Morgan would kill him, if he caught him; that the life he treasured would be taken from him; that the magnificent body which he had always so greatly admired would be shattered and broken. The mental picture he drew further increased his terror, and he began to mutter incoherent blasphemies as he raced his horse at a breakneck pace toward the Cache.