Keith was irritated. Climbing up a
narrow terrace of shale, he headed straight up the slope, as if his
intention were to reach the higher terraces of the mountain, and then
he swung suddenly down into a coulee, where he was out of sight. Here
he waited for ten minutes, then struck deliberately and openly back
into the valley. He chuckled when he saw how cleverly his ruse had
worked. The stranger was a quarter of a mile up the mountain and still
climbing.
"Now what the devil is he taking all that trouble for?" Keith asked
himself.
An instant later the stranger saw him again. For perhaps a minute he
halted, and in that minute Keith fancied he was getting a round
cursing. Then the stranger headed for him, and this time there was no
escape, for the moment he struck the shelving slope of the valley, he
prodded his horse into a canter, swiftly diminishing the distance
between them. Keith unbuttoned the flap of his pistol holster and
maneuvered so that he would be partly concealed by his pack when the
horseman rode up. The persistence of the stranger suggested to him that
Mary Josephine had lost no time in telling McDowell where the law would
be most likely to find him.
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