He
stopped to give Pink's exhausted horse a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, and
came on, grinning a little with the comers of his mouth tipped down.
"Here's what's left of the hobbles the buckskin wore," he said, holding up the
cut loops of a figure-eight rope hobble. "Kinda speaks for itself, don't it?"
They crowded around to inspect this plain evidence of stealing. Afterwards
they stood hard-eyed and with a flush on their cheek-bones, considering what
was the best and wisest way to meet this emergency. As to hunting afoot for
their horses, the chance of success was almost too small to be considered at
all, Pink's horse was not fit for further travel until he had rested. There
was one pair of field glasses -and there were nine irate men to whom inaction
was intolerable.
"One thing we can do, if we have to," Luck said at last, with the fighting
look in his face which moving-picture people had cause to remember. "We can
help ourselves to any horses we run across. Applehead, how's the best way to
go about it?"
Applehead, thus pushed into leadership, chewed his mustache and eyed the mesa
sourly. "Well, seein' they've set us afoot, I calc'late we're jest about
entitled to any dang thing we run across that's ridable," he acceded.
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