Bud stooped, picked up the cameo pin and turned it absent-mindedly in his fingers. His sign of the Golden Arrow. The red blood of youth crept upward and dyed his cheeks at the thought of the ignominy he would have suffered had he been obliged to go and confess to Bonnie Prosser that he had lost her pin; that Butch Cassidy had taken it away from him! In the pressure of events since that day when he had ridden blithely across the reservation with the cameo pin worn proudly above his forehead, he had not thought so much about it. He had fancied himself invulnerable to the young archer's barbed darts. Now--now he was suddenly aware of a great hunger, a longing that engulfed even his hatred for Butch. "Hell!" said Bob, thinking of his gun lying at the bottom of the spring. "Hunh?" said Bud, thinking that he had time in plenty to ride to Prosser's ranch before dark. "Hell, you damn' fool!" Bob looked at him with his mouth drawn down at the corners like a child about to cry. "Oh, sure," Bud agreed, without having the faintest idea of what had been said. Bob's mouth opened, closed again very slowly. He was staring from Bud's face to the brooch in Bud's hand, and at the fingers softly caressing the carved face of the woman. "Looks like her," said Bob with much sarcasm. "A--a little." Bud's forefinger closed tenderly upon the profile. "Say, come out of it!" growled Bob. "What about Butch?" "Butch? Why, Butch will get killed if he crosses my trail again. Why?" Young Bud's eyes turned surprisedly toward Bob. "Goin' to keep up the hunt, knowin' he's p'pared to jump us the minute we find it?" "Why, sure! You don't think Butch cuts any figure with me, do you?" (Plenty of time--and he could get there before dark, if he hurried.) "No--'course he don't!" cried a mocking voice somewhere among the rocks. Bud started, closed his fingers upon the brooch and turned toward the voice. The softness had left his eyes, which snapped with their old fire. "You know it, Butch! You heard what I said." Strange how the flinging of that cameo pin at his feet brought Bonnie so vividly before him that even his quarrel with Butch seemed irrelevant, a matter of secondary importance. Now he knew that the illuminating truth had come upon him at the pool when he picked up his hat and saw that the brooch was gone. It was like losing Bonnie herself--and of course he had always known, deep in his heart, that he meant never to lose Bonnie Prosser out of his life; that some day--but the time of easy assurance was past, and it had taken the rough hand of Butch Cassidy to tear away the film from his eyes, just as he had torn the pin from Bud's hat. "See you later, Butch!" he called defiantly, and started on a run for his horse. "Yeah--yo're damn' right!" Butch's mocking laughter followed him, echoed and was flung back again and again from the farther wall of the canyon. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE "DISARM THE PRISONER!"