Bud, however, was not awake to much of anything save the fact that he was beginning to lose interest in anything but sleep; and that the buckskin was a tricky brute in the hills and not to be compared with the Walking Sorrel. The buckskin had a way of climbing hills in leaps that gave no thought to secure footing, but left him winded at the top. His manner of descending a steep slope was quite as reckless and consisted of a series of slides interspersed with dancing sidewise and taking fright at various objects. Bud had saddled him because he happened to be in a corral where he was handy, but he was wishing now--when he roused sufficiently to wish for anything except sleep--that he had taken the time to catch a horse out of the pasture. It might have proved quicker in the long run. So, slipping, sliding, fighting the buckskin and guarding as best he could his burden of food, Bud arrived in the course of time at the spring beneath the sandstone cliffs. By that time he was indifferent to everything. It would have taken Butch Cassidy himself to rouse Bud to the fighting point. He was glad, in a dull, apathetic way, that he had made the trip from the ranch so that Bob could eat before he got as hungry as Bud had been. He managed also to picket the buckskin in the middle of good grass, and to put the supplies up on a shelf of rock away from small prowlers. After that Bud dropped down in the shade of the cliff, pulled his hat over his eyes, gave one huge sigh and dropped like a plummet into the oblivion of dreamless slumber. At the Palmer ranch black Sam was shuffling back and forth across the kitchen, clearing away the débris of a scanty breakfast well-cooked, where nine men had eaten silently and gone their ways; all except Gelle, who had volunteered to remain on guard over Palmer until the sheriff was ready to take him away to the county seat. The coroner had just arrived, and was down in the cow pasture looking over the scene of the double killing and arguing with the sheriff in the intervals of rolling a fresh chew of tobacco relishfully from cheek to cheek. Sam turned scared eyes toward Lark before he remembered his manners and ducked his head in what passed for a bow. Gelle, on a bench before the door, grinned cheerful greeting. "You musta heard the news and got up b'fore breakfast," Gelle bantered. "Bud git in last night?" Lark swung down and sat on the bench beside his "top hand"--as Gelle loved to consider himself. "Bud got in this morning before daylight. Hauled me outa bed and started me out thinkin' I was goin' to git some excitement, mebbe. Then he hazed me awn in whilst he took out across country to meet Bob." "Which means, I guess, that they didn't have no luck last night." Gelle's voice betrayed his disappointment.