Bud slowed to a walk and turned in the saddle,
listening. Away back, where he had first met the signs of
civilization, the dog he had aroused was barking again, his
deep baying blurred by the distance. Bud grinned to himself
and rode on at a walk, speaking now and then to an inquiring
dog and calling him Purp in a tone that soothed.
Crater, he discovered in a cursory patrol of the place, was
no more than an overgrown village. The court-house and jail
stood on the main street, and just beyond was the bank. Bud
rode here and there, examining closely the fronts of various
buildings before he concluded that there was only the one
bank in Crater. When he was quite sure of that he chose place
near by the rear of the bank, where one horse and a cow
occupied a comfortable corral together with hay. He unsaddled
Sunfish and turned him there, himself returning to the bank
before those other night-riders had more than reached the
first straggling suburbs of the town.
On the porch of the court-house, behind a jutting corner
pillar that seemed especially designed for the concealment of
a man in Bud's situation, he rolled cigarette which he meant
to smoke later on when the way was clear, and waited for the
horsemen to appear.
Presently they came, rode to a point opposite the court-house
and bank with no more than a careless glance that way, and
halted in front of an uninviting hotel across the street.
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