So now we had Timberline accounted for satisfactorily to ourselves; he was “after the reward.” We never said this to him, but we worked out his steps from the start. As stock-tender at Rongis he had seen that yellow poster pasted up, and had read it, day after day, with its promise of what to him was a fortune. To Owl Creek he could not go alone, having no money to buy a horse, and being afraid, too, perhaps. If he could only find that missing dead man--or the two of them--he might find a clew. My sheep hunt had dropped like a Providence into his hand. We got across the hot country where rattlesnakes were thick where neither man lived nor water ran, and came to the first lone habitation in this new part of the world--a new set of mountains, a new set of creeks. A man stood at the door watching us come. “Know him?” I asked Scipio. “I’ve heard of him,” said Scipio. “He married a squaw.” We were now opposite the man’s door. “You folks after the reward?” said he. “After mountain sheep,” I replied, somewhat angry. We camped some ten miles beyond him, and the next day crossed a low range, stopping near another cabin for noon. They gave us a quantity of berries they had picked, and we gave them some potatoes. “After the reward?” said one of them as we rode away, and I contradicted him with temper. “Lie to ’em,” said Scipio. “Say yes.” He developed his theory of truthfulness; it was not real falsehood to answer as you chose questions people had no right to ask; in fact, the only real lie was when you denied something wrong you had done. “And I’ve told hundreds of them, too,” he concluded pensively. Something had begun to weigh upon our cheerfulness in this new country. The reward dogged us, and we saw strange actions of people twice. We came upon some hot sulphur springs[3] and camped near them, with a wide stream between us and another camp. Those people--two men and two women--emerged from their tent, surveyed us, nodded to us, and settled down again. Next morning they had vanished; we could see the gleam of empty bottles on the bank opposite where they had been. And once, riding out of a little valley, we sighted close to us through cottonwoods a horseman leading a pack horse out of the next little valley. He did not nod to us, but pursued his parallel course some three hundred yards off, until a rise in the ground hid him for a while; when this was passed he was no longer where he should have been, abreast of us, but far to the front, galloping away. That was our last sight of him. We spoke of these actions a little. Did these people suspect us, or were they afraid we suspected them?