McMasters, following close behind Rudabaugh, was not close enough to see him when he fired, but soon he saw what had been done. Horrified, he turned away, leaving the men he met to see for themselves. He picked up the moccasins the women had left on the hither bank. His step was light as that of a panther when he entered the camp. He crossed the grass to where Rudabaugh now sat, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Get up, you damned hound!” he said. “Get up and look a man in the face, you beastly, murdering coward!” Rudabaugh reached for his weapon before he struggled upright, but stayed his hand in time. The two hands of the younger man were raised above the dark revolver stocks. But he did not fire. “The man who would do a thing like that is no part of a man at all!” Rudabaugh and all his remaining men heard the words. “I’ll not ride a foot with a murderer like you. Now take my advice—get out of here fast as you can! If these people catch up with you they’ll even things with you—their village can’t be far from here. Those women never harmed you.” “You all heard my word!” Rudabaugh’s voice broke hoarsely. “You’ve heard mine! I ought to kill you now, but I am going to leave you.” “The lousy thieves!” Rudabaugh tried to work up his vanished rage. “You think I’ll let them steal my horses and get away with it? It’s two less of them. Besides, there’s no law in here. Besides, you’re going to break your own word.” The eye of McMasters narrowed. “Don’t say that again,” said he. “I am saving you for a later day. Those were Comanches that you killed.” “They’re not Comanches!” asserted Rudabaugh. “The Comanches don’t range in here. It’s all Chickasaws above here. They were Chickasaws, or maybe Wacos.” Dan McMasters held up two moccasins before he replaced them in his pocket. “I know Comanche moccasins when I see them,” said he. “Those women left these when they went into the water. “There is no use your trying to trail me,” he added, as he backed to the edge of the wood where his horse was tethered. “I tell you, the best thing you can do is to get out of here as fast as you can!” There was not a man in all that armed band that had courage to reach hand to weapon as he passed. Perhaps a sullen contempt for their leader had come to them. Rudabaugh’s own blasphemies, his sudden recovery of his weapons came too late. McMasters was in saddle and riding, hid by the cover of the wood. At first they thought he had headed for the north, as they later trailed his horse. But half a mile farther on they saw where he had turned in his tracks and headed directly south. “I don’t know where he went,” remarked one trailer, “but I wish I did. He’s likely to be mad enough to set the Rangers after us again. I more’n half believe right now that he had a hand in their catching us down at Del Sol. If we’d got away with all that scrip Rudabaugh says there was we’d have been out of this, maybe.”