EDDIE went over to the stove and lifted the lid.  After a glance inside, he picked up a handful of chips and twigs from the woodbox and started to kindle a fire.

"You want to look around," he said, "hop to it.  I'll make out to cook."

There was some saddle stock in the corral, and I taken my rope and walked out there.  One was a line-back dun, a quick-moving horse I liked the looks of, so I crawled through the fence and dabbed a loop on him.

When I'd saddled up I led him to the door.  "Hand me out one of those Winchesters," I said to Eddie, and stepped, into the saddle.

The horse crow-hopped a couple of times to give me confidence, and then of a sudden he really doubled up and went to bucking.  He did a fair country job of it, too.  I was no contest hand, so I rode him straight up and to a finish, and when he had it out of his system we understood each other.

Eddie had come to the door and watched me.  "You can ride," he said, "but that horse didn't mean it.  He was just dustin' you off."

He handed me up the rifle and I turned the line-back and went into the trees.

Knowing what might be expected of me, I didn't do it.  Instead of dropping down to the river crossing to see who had been using it, and how many, I circled back of the cabin and went up the ridge under cover of the trees.

On this side of the ridge the run-off water ran into creeks and then down to the Hanging Woman.  On the other side the water ran down to the Tongue River.  At this point it was maybe eight miles between the two, and it was rough country.

At the top of the ridge I looked back across the Hanging Woman toward Poker Jim Butte and the Otter Creek country.  You never saw anything more peaceful than that spread of land right then, but I was not a trusting man.

Most of the ridges and buttes were timbered, and there was a good bit of heavier timber along the creeks, with here and there a patch of willows.  Drifting down the ridge, I cut back and forth for sign... lots of deer, and several bunches of cattle.  I started a couple of elk feeding at the head of Dead Man Creek, but not wanting to advertise myself, I let them go.

A time or two I came on horse tracks.  One set was two riders traveling together, cutting across country toward the west.  A bit later, just after coming on a set of buffalo tracks, maybe six or eight in the bunch, I found the tracks of another horse.

The hoofprint was light and small, but poorly defined, and that very fact bothered me.  Somehow all my instincts told me that hoofprint should be sharply defined.  Turning aside, I trailed the prints for a couple of miles until the shadows were growing and it was time to head for the line camp.  But before I swung off I had learned a few things.