games in the water that was too sinfully black to reflect God’s own light.
On the hill-top they rose the Lion lamps, and caught the air from mountains that the breath of no living thing warmed. Lou came of the breed that loves the asphalt-track on the edge of the great world’s grass-plot, and he handled his men with cunning and delight. Round the curved knolls over the Lion where the nozzle-flash climbed to the stars; slow-foot through the running shingle beyond, and into the place where the silence of all the world lived. Here he turned in the saddle.
“You said Ormond saw him on the track?”
“Yes,” said Murray; “he was going———”
The boys’ deep-chested growl drowned the words. The old crumbling track, beaten out a lifetime ago by the feet of men seeking gold, held the sky-line ten miles off as the bullet flies, and well Scannell’s men knew the land in between. For they drew cattle from it in the season, and horses; taking the underway carefully, with daylight to guide.
“Then we’ll make a bee-line,” said Lou. “It’s going to be rough.”
Lou lied when it so pleased him, but he spoke less than the truth this night. With hands low and light on the rein, they charged down the slope that was made of frozen creeklets and stones, and rounded off by a brawling little stream with soft bottom, Each man’s breath
