"Thar's been plenty time for him to get here ahead of you, Mrs. Glendon," Limber assured her. "He'd a been here long before I found you at the forks of the road, if he was comin'. I guess he was just bluffin' you, and when he found it didn't work he lit out with the two horses." Powell agreed heartily with Limber, but to calm her fears, the cowboy barred the door. Katherine, succumbing to the sedative the doctor administered, relaxed gradually. Her lids closed wearily, but her lips moved, and in half-broken sentences she went over the terrible scene; pleading with her husband for Powell's life, or talking to the dead dog, begging it not to let the little scarlet thread reach her; then she sank into silence, unconscious of all that she had revealed. The men's eyes met. They read each other's thoughts. Limber's face was set and white, as, with a nod to the doctor, he rose and tiptoed from the room into the kitchen where Chappo was sitting near the stove. The cowboy took his pistol from the holster at his hip, and looked at the cylinder. Twisting it between his fingers he slipped the cartridges from it. They were wet from the rain. "Got some lard?" he asked Chappo, and when the Mexican brought it, Limber greased the cartridges and put them back into the cylinder, then dropped the pistol into the holster of his cartridge belt. A Winchester rifle hung in a leather scabbard on the kitchen wall, and Limber lifted it down. Chappo watched him examine the magazine of the gun. "Eet is all right," he said. "Eet shoots good." The Mexican's eyes met Limber's. "You go hunting, Leember? Take heem." "Yes. Give me some jerky, Chappo. I may not get any game for a couple of days." Chappo understood, and hastened to get the stiff strips of sun-dried meat which he put in a small cotton sack and handed to the cowboy, saying, "Good luck, Leember! Shoot straight!" With a grim smile the Mexican saw the cowboy and gun disappear. Peanut looked up in surprised reproach as his master reached for the saddle hung on a peg. The pony knew he had well-earned his blanket and bin of oats that night. "We've got some more work to do, Peanut," said Limber, throwing the saddle across the pony's back, and Peanut, with a final bite at the oats, turned again to face the storm with his master. The cowboy was sure that Glendon had pushed on toward the border, and not knowing about the gold he was carrying with him, supposed he had taken Fox as a relay horse. This would give Glendon the advantage should the chase be protracted; but, Limber knew that Peanut's nervous energy and staying qualities in the mountains made him equal to any two ordinary horses. "We'll follow him till Hell freezes over, Peanut, and we'll sure get him in the end," said the cowpuncher as he rode into the night.