"Well, you'll get it, all right," replied Morgan, "and dam' quick, too, if you think you can run it over me! I want you to understand, Mr. Crittenden, that I am the sheriff of this county, and the first break you make to go after John Upton I'll send you down to Geronimo with the nippers on, to answer for resisting an officer! Now as for these men of yours, I give every one of 'em notice, here and now, that I want this racket to stop, and the first man that goes up against me will wind up in the county jail. Bill," he continued, turning to his trusted deputy, "I leave you in charge of this layout while I go after John Upton. Keep the whole outfit in camp until I come back, if you have to kill 'em. I've got enough of this." He rode down to the store with his posse, bought a feed of grain for his horses and provisions for his men, and half an hour afterward went galloping out the Carrizo trail, his keen eye scanning the distant ridges and reading the desert signs like a book. It did not take an Indian trailer to interpret the deep-trampled record of that path. Two days before a big herd of cows and calves had come into Verde Crossing from Carrizo, driven by many shod horses and hustled along in a hurry. As he approached Carrizo fresher tracks cut across the old signs, the tracks of cows and calves fleeing from scampering ponies, and at the Springs the fresh signs closed in and trampled out all evidence of the old drive. It was the last page of the story, written indelibly in the sandy earth. On the open _parada_ ground the cropped ears had all been gathered, but the bruised bushes, the blood and signs of struggle told the plain story of Upton's branding, just as the vacancy of the landscape and the long trail leading to the north spelled the material facts of the drama. The Wine-glass cows that used to be about Carrizo Springs were gone—John Upton had driven them north. But why? The answer lay beyond Carrizo Springs, where the white trail leads down from Lost Dog Cañon. There the trampled tracks that led into Verde Crossing stood out plain again in the dust—three days old and pressed on by hurrying horses. If the law could accept the record of Nature's outspread book Crit and Upton were condemned already, the one for stealing Pecos Dalhart's herd, the other for branding over the Wine-glasses. But the law demands more than that. It demands evidence that a lawyer can read; the sworn testimony of honest and unprejudiced witnesses; the identification of men, brands, and cows, proved beyond a doubt; and all this in a country where all cows look alike, all witnesses are partisans, and an honest man is the noblest work of God. Boone Morgan took up the long trail to the north with fire in his eye, and he rode furiously, as was his duty, but deep down in his heart he knew he was after the wrong man, and would not even get him. CHAPTER XII MOUNTAIN LAW