"Now there's a man, Mr. Hall, that I thought I knowed well and I always claimed he was a coward. It jest shows how you sometimes git fooled. When it comes to a showdown that jasper always weakened, but it was jest because he was foxy. He knowed if he drawed the other feller would git him, and so he never drawed. He hired gunmen to do his fighting because gunmen was cheap and he wanted to keep out of jail; but when them Slash-knife boys fell down he seen right there he'd have to do his dirty work himself. That was the time when the dog-hair cropped out on him and I seen, by grab, he was a killer. Not a gun-fighter, mind ye--and they're dangerous enough--but one of these sneaking, calculating kind. He fights like the A-paches, never showing a head and always shooting from ambush; and the only way we'll git him is to go him one better--we've got to out-Injun him, that's all!" "I'm ready," replied Hall. "Why not start right now?" And Meshackatee took him at his word. They headed off east up the dim, Indian trail that Meshackatee had followed down to water; and as the stars wheeled in their courses Hall saw their direction change until at last they were going northwest. They had scrambled up a wash and then on up grassy slopes which led to the big ridge behind; and from there they had turned north, following a trail that dipped and twisted as it skirted the east slope of Turkey Creek. They rode and walked by turns, driving the pack-animal before them; and as the east began to flush they took to high ground and camped through the long, sultry day. The summer heat was at its height, the close, oppressive heat that presages torrential rains to come; and from the top of their butte they could see the white thunderheads, riding majestically up above the Rim. Below them lay the canyon with Turkey Creek at its bottom and, still further northwest, the broad swales of Maverick Basin showed dimly through a pass in the hills. Hall looked it all over through Meshackatee's big glasses, when it came his turn to stand guard; and then he looked back along the trail which they had followed, trying to fix every landmark in his mind. For if all went well the time would soon come when he would be fleeing through the night with Allifair; and every butte and ridge, every turn in that dim trail, must be stamped indelibly on his memory. He traced it out again, noting each landmark through his glasses, and then suddenly he picked up an Indian. He had stepped out from some scrub-oaks and was examining their tracks, where they had passed through a sandy swale, and as he disappeared into the brush Hall ran and wakened Meshackatee, but the Apache did not show himself again.