On and on he rode, keeping wherever
possible to the higher levels to avoid the fences of the nesters whose
fields and pastures followed the windings of the creek bottoms.
Higher and higher they climbed and rougher grew the way. The scrub
willows gave place to patches of bull pine and the long stretches of
buffalo grass to ugly bare patches of black rock. In and out of the
scrub timber they wended, following deep coulees to their sources and
crossing steep-pitched divides into other coulees. The fences of the
nesters were left far behind and following old game trails, or no
trails at all, the Texan pushed unhesitatingly forward. At last, just
as the dim outlines of the mountains were beginning to assume definite
shape in the first faint hint of the morning grey, he pulled into a
more extensive patch of timber than any they had passed and dismounting
motioned the others to the ground.
While the Texan prepared breakfast, Bat busied himself with the
blankets and when the meal was finished Alice found a tent awaiting
her, which the half-breed had constructed by throwing the pack-tarp
over a number of light poles whose ends rested upon a fallen
tree-trunk. Never in her life, thought the girl, as she sank into the
foot-thick mattress of pine boughs that underlay the blankets, had a
bed felt so comfortable, so absolutely satisfying.
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