It was an extremely puzzled young man who rode and rode that night in pursuit of that evasive, nagging, altogether maddening tinkle. Always just over the next little rise he would hear it, or down in the next little draw; never close enough for him to discover the trick; never far enough away for him to give up the chase. The stars he had been watching in camp swam through the purple immensity above him and slid behind the skyline. Other stars as brilliant appeared and began their slow, swimming journey. Pink rode, and stopped to listen, and rode on again until it seemed to him that he must be dreaming some terribly realistic nightmare. He was sitting on his horse on a lava-crusted ridge, straining bloodshot eyes into the mesa that stretched dimly before him, when dawn came streaking the sky with blood orange and purple and crimson. The stars were quenched in that flood of light; and Pink, looking now with clearer vision, saw that there was no living thing in sight save a coyote trotting home from his night's hunting. He turned short around and, getting his bearings from his memory of certain stars and from the sun that was peering at him from the top of a bare peak, and from that sense of direction which becomes second nature to a man who had lived long on the range, started for camp with his ill news. CHAPTER XIV. ONE PUT OVER ON THE BUNCH “Sounds to me,” volunteered the irrepressible Big Medicine after a heavy silence, “like as if you'd gone to sleep on your hawse, Little One, and dreamed that there tinkle-tinkle stuff. By cripes, I'd like to see the bell-hawse that could walk away from ME 'nless I was asleep an' dreamin' about it. Sounds like--” “Sounds like Navvy work,” Applehead put in, eyeing the surrounding rim of sun-gilded mesa, where little brown birds fluttered in short, swift flights and chirped with exasperating cheerfulness. “If it was anybody, it was Ramon Chavez,” Luck declared with the positiveness of his firm conviction. “By the tracks here, we're crowding up on him. And no man that's guilty of a crime, Applehead, is going to ride day after day without wanting to take a look over his shoulder to see if be's followed. He's probably seen us from some of these ridges--yesterday, most likely. And do you think he wouldn't know this bunch as far as he could see us, even without glasses? The chances are he has them, though. He'd be a fool if he didn't stake himself to a pair.” “Say, by gracious,” Andy observed somewhat irrelevantly, his eyes going over the group, “this would sure make great picture dope, wouldn't it? Why didn't we bring Pete along, darn it? Us all standing around here, plumb helpless because we're afoot--” “Aw, shut up!” snapped Pink, upon whom the burden of responsibility lay heavy. “I oughta be hung for laying around the fire here instead of being out there on guard! I oughta--” “It ain't your fault,” Weary championed him warmly. “We all heard the bell--”