They held a stiff trot and in an hour out from camp they struck rough going, the choppy nature of the country announcing that they were in the edge of the Breaks. The horses slid down into cut-bank washes and bad-land cracks, following the bottoms to some feasible point of ascent in the opposite wall. Daylight found them twenty miles from camp and the horses were breathing hard. They turned into a coulee threaded by a well-worn trail. Three miles along this Bentley turned to the right up a branching gulch with eight men. Another mile and Carp led a similar detachment off to the left. Billie rode with the sheriff and Harris at the head of the rest, holding to the beaten trail. "They had hours the start of us," Harris said. "They'd catch up fresh horses on the range and keep on till they got in sometime in the night." He motioned to Billie. "You fall back," he said. The men had drawn their rifles from the scabbards. "They never did post a guard. It wouldn't occur to Lang that such a force could be mustered and start out short of a month. If he thought so they'd be out of here and scattered instead of having a lookout along the trail. But there's just a chance. So for a little piece you'd better bring up the rear." She started to dissent but the sheriff seconded Harris's advice. "You move along back, Billie," he said. He patted her shoulder and smiled. "I'm a-running this layout and if you don't mind the old sheriff he'll have to picket you." She nodded and pulled Papoose out of the trail till the others filed by, riding with Horne in rear of the rest. The party halted while Harris dismounted to examine the trail. It was hard-packed but the scant signs showed that shod horses had come in since any had gone out. "At least, there's some of them back," he said. "Likely all." "Lang is busy gloating over the fact that the Three Bar is sacked," Alden said. "Figuring that the whole country will be afraid of him now and that his friends will stand by--without a thought that his neck will maybe get stretched a foot long before night." Harris turned up a side pocket and the men waited while he and the sheriff climbed a ridge on foot to investigate. Harris motioned to the girl. "Come along up where you can see," he said and she followed them up the ridge. Two hundred yards from the horses they came out on a crest which afforded a view of the basin that sheltered Lang's stockade. From behind a sage-clump Harris trained his glasses on the group a mile out across the shallow basin. Smoke rose from the chimney of the main building. Two men stood before a teepee near the stockade. There were two other tents inside the structure, with a number of men moving about them. Three sat on the ground with their backs against the log walls of the main house. Thirty or more horses fed in a pasture lot and a little band of eight or ten stood huddled together inside the stockade at the far end from the tents.