He tied his horse in a pine grove and stole silently down to the bunk house. This he circled, came to the front door on his tiptoes, and entered noiselessly. A man lay sleeping on one of the farther bunks, arms flung wide in the deep slumber of fatigue. Falkner reached for a rifle resting on a pair of elk horns attached to the wall, and took from one of the tines an ammunition belt. He turned, knocked over in the darkness a chair, and fled into the night with the rifle in one hand, the belt in the other. Reaching the pine grove, he remounted, skirted the lip of the valley, and struck at its mouth the trail to the Circle Diamond. Three quarters of an hour later he was lying on the edge of a hill pocket above that ranch with his eyes fastened to the moonlit corral in which stood two saddled horses. CHAPTER XIII THE NIGHT RAID THE moon was just going under a cloud when Rowan and his two companions rode away from the Circle Diamond. They had plenty of time before the appointed hour at the Three Pines. Since they expected to ride hard during the night, they took now a leisurely road gait in and out among the hills. There was little conversation. Cole was not friendly toward Silcott, though he had had no open break with him. He still remembered with resentment that night when Larry had flirted so outrageously with Kate. To Jack Cole’s simple mind the thing had carried the earmarks of treachery. The two had been rather close. They had slept under the same tarp many a time. He could not understand the vanity which had driven Larry to a public exhibition of his power with women. But he and Kate had talked the thing out, had quarrelled and made up. His sense of dignity kept him from settling the matter with Silcott by the simple primitive method of fisticuffs. Therefore he bottled up his sense of injury under a manner of cool aloofness. Yerby and Rogers were waiting for them beneath the largest of the big pines. “Better ’light, boys,” suggested the Texan. “I reckon we might as well kinder talk things over. We aim to bend the law consid’able to-night. If any of you lads is feelin’ tol’able anxious he’d better burn the wind back to camp. Old Man Trouble is right ahaid of us on the trail. Now’s the time to holler. No use bellyachin’ when it’s too late.” “Think we’re quitters?” Larry demanded indignantly. “No, son, I don’t allow you are. If I did you can bet them fifteen-dollar boots of yours that you or Sam Yerby one wouldn’t be here. What I’m sayin’ is that this is serious business. Take a good, square look at it before you-all go ahaid.”