“What else was it I called him besides a slacker--after I’d beat him up till he couldn’t stand, an’ him a sick man at that?” Betty laughed at the way each of them, absorbed in a personal point of view, was carrying on a one-sided conversation. “Are you going up to Elk Creek to-day, Dad? If you are, I wish you’d let me go along.” “I was thinkin’ about it. Like to go, would you? All right. We might drive and take Ruthie.” “That’d be fine. Let’s go.” Betty flew into the house to get ready. CHAPTER XVIII A HOT TRAIL Sheriff Daniels rode across the hogback above Elk Creek to a small ranch recently taken up by a homesteader, much to the annoyance of Jake Prowers. He found the man in a shed that served temporarily as a barn. Here a cow was proudly licking a very wobbly calf. “’Lo, Sheriff. How’re things comin’ with you? Fine an’ dandy?” “No complaint, Howard. Had an increase in yore herd, looks like.” “Yessir, though it didn’t look much thataway ’bout three o’clock this mo’ning a.m.” “Come near losing her?” “Bet I did. Both of ’em. But you never can tell, as the old sayin’ is. I stayed with it, an’ everything’s all right now.” “I come across the hogback to have a chin with Black. Know whether he’s home?” the officer asked. “No, sir, I don’t. He passed down the road whilst I was up with old bossie here right early.” The sheriff complimented his humor by repeating it. “At three o’clock this mo’ning a.m.?” “Yessir. I figured he must be going somewheres to be settin’ off at that time o’ day.” “Alone, was he?” “Why, no, I reckon there was some one with him.” Daniels threw a leg across a feed-rack, drew out a knife from his pocket, and began to sharpen it on the leather of his boot. “Dark as all git out, wasn’t it? How’d you know it was Don?” The homesteader grinned. “Every daisy in the dell knows his story too darned well,” he parodied. “Singin’ ‘Sweet Marie,’ was he?” “Yep. Say, what kind of a mash would you feed her? She’s right feverish yet, I shouldn’t wonder.” The sheriff gave advice out of his experience before he came back ten minutes later to a subject that interested him more. “Don was out rounding-up cattle yesterday, wasn’t he? Seems some one told me so.” “Likely enough. He was away from the shack all day. Wasn’t home by dark. I seen a light up there somewheres about nine-thirty.” The officer rode up to the cabin Black was using. The door was hospitably unlatched, but nobody was at home. Daniels walked in and looked around. It was both dirty and untidy, but it told no tales of what its occupant had been doing in the past twenty-four hours.