CHAPTER XII
THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE
BECAUSE they had no human means of knowing anything about the black automobile that had whirled across the mesa to the south-east and left its mysterious passengers in one of the arroyos that leads into the Sandias Mountains near Coyote Springs, nine cowpuncher deputy-sheriffs bored their way steadily through sun and wind and thirst, traveling due northwest, keeping always on the trail of the six horses that traveled steadily before them. Always a day's march behind, always watching hopefully for some sign of delay—for an encouraging freshness in the tracks that would show a lessening distance between the two parties, Luck and his Happy Family rode from dawn till dusk, from another dawn to another dusk. Their horses, full of little exuberant outbursts of horse-foolishness when they had left town, settled down to a dogged, plodding half
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