"Well, it wouldn't hardly be worth while chasing him on foot without a gun, that's shore," the sheriff said, grave once more. "But you can get home all right; that's easy." "How can I?" asked the puncher, eyeing the sheriff's horse and waiting for the invitation to ride double on it. "Why, walk," was the reply. "It's only about twenty miles as the crow flies--say twenty-five on the trail." "Walk! Walk!" cried his companion, savagely kicking at a lizard which looked out from a crevice in the rock wall. "I never walked five miles all at once in my life!" "Well, it'll be a new experience, and you can't begin any younger," replied Shields as he swung into his saddle. "It'll do you good, too--increase your appetite." "I'm so hungry now I'm half starved," replied the other. "But I'll pay up for all this, you see if I don't! I'll get square with that d----d outlaw!" "You don't know enough to be glad you were found," retorted the sheriff. "And if he hadn't told Bill where to look for you, you wouldn't have been, neither. You got off easy, Bucknell, and don't you forget it, neither. Men have been killed for less than what you tried to do." The puncher wilted, for twenty-five miles in high-heeled boots, over rocks and sand, and with an empty stomach, was terrible to contemplate, and he turned to the sheriff beseechingly. "Give me a lift, Sheriff," he implored. "Take me up behind you--I can't walk all the way!" Shields looked at the sun, which was nearing the western horizon, and thought for a minute. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I hadn't ought to help you a step, not a single, solitary step, and you know it. You tried your best to run against me. You tried to hold me up there by the corral, and then after I had warned you not to go out for The Orphan you went right ahead. Now you're asking me to help you out of your trouble, to make good for your fool stupidity. But I'll take you as far as the end of the canyon--no, I'll take you on to the ford, and then you can do the rest on foot. That'll leave you ten or a dozen miles. Get aboard." CHAPTER VIII "A TIMBER WOLF IN HIS OWN COUNTRY" When The Orphan said good-by to Bill he sat quietly in his saddle for a minute watching the departing stage and wondered how it was that he had the decency to avoid a fight with the cowboys in the presence of the women. Then Helen's words came to him and he smiled at the idea of peace when he would have to fight the outfit before sundown. The heat of the sun on his bare head recalled him from his mental wanderings and he wheeled abruptly and galloped along the trail to where he remembered that a tiny, blood-stained handkerchief lay in the dust and sand. Soon he espied it and, swinging over in the saddle, deftly picked it up and regained his upright position, his head reeling at the effort. Unfolding it he examined the neat "H" done in silk in one corner and smiled as he put it in his chaps pocket where he kept his extra ammunition.