Because there was nothing else that he could do Bud came out of the pool, nipping over the hot gravel to where his clothes lay in a heap ten feet from where Butch sat smoking. Butch had moved while Bud was under water, and Bud's gun and belt had moved with him; also Bud's big clasp knife that was useful for so many things. Bud dressed as unconcernedly as if the man sitting there in the shade had been Bob. Butch spun Bud's hat to him--without the cameo pin,--and eyed Bud sharply when he picked it up and looked at the flopping brim with the two blackened pinholes. Bud looked up at him, his eyes black with anger. "Pretty small, Butch! I knew you were a thief, but I did have some respect for you for taking a chance, anyway. A stunt like this is so low-down you'd have to climb a ladder to scratch a snake on the belly!" He stared a moment longer and put on his hat. To move toward Butch would have been one way of committing suicide, and even in anger Bud was no fool. "Yeah--one more reason why I'll kill yuh, Bud. Some day." Butch got up, dusting off his trousers with downward sweeps of his palms--close to his gun, Bud saw with a curl of the lip. "Yes? Well, you'll have to go some unless you play safe and do it now." "I'll be willin' t' go when the time comes," Butch retorted. "Move awn--my mouth's waterin' fer chicken." They moved on, Bud in the lead. Lark's rifle, he saw, was gone from the saddle. A foolish thing he had done, and a costly, to go swimming in that pool as carelessly as if he were down in the Basin pasture. He could find no excuse for it in his belief that he had the hills to himself that day. After so long a time he and Bob had both come to the conclusion that Kid Kern was watching Butch so closely that there would be no attempt made at present to retrieve the loot, and that they were therefore perfectly safe to search where they would. At Butch's command, Bud dismounted some distance from the spring where they had made a makeshift camp. They approached the place on foot and so came upon Bob when he was least looking for callers, the supposition being that Bud would search until close to sundown before coming to camp. It was Butch's casual tones that brought Bob facing them in blank astonishment. "I got a gun ag'inst Bud's backbone," Butch announced in a cheerful, conversational manner. "He'll git it, right plumb through the liver, first crooked move you make. Toss yore gun into the spring. It won't hurt the water none." "Get him if you can, Bob," Bud countermanded. "Let the damned skunk shoot if he wants to; he will, anyway." Bob looked at Bud, glanced over his shoulder into Butch's narrowed eyes, drew his gun and threw it into the spring with a muttered oath. Butch grinned. "Got a knife? Throw that in too. All right, boys, let's go awn and have that chicken dinner. I an' Bud's been talkin' about it all the way over."