They had held their horses down to a pace that merely kept them well
ahead of the Indians; and though the horses were sweating, they were holding
their own easily enough--with a reserve fund of speed if their riders needed
to call upon it.
Applehead, glancing often behind him, scowled over the puzzle of that fanlike
formation of riders. They would hardly begin so soon to herd him and his men
into that evil little rock basin with the sinister name, and there was no
other reason he could think of which would justify those tactics, unless
another party waited ahead of them. He squinted ahead uneasily, but the mesa
lay parched and empty under the sky--
And then, peering straight into the glare of the sun, he saw, down the slope
which they had climbed without realizing that it would have a crest, it was so
low--Applehead saw the answer to the puzzle; saw and gave his funny little
grunt of astonishment and dismay. Straight as a chalk line from the sandstone
ledge on their right to the straight-walled butte on their left stretched that
boundary line between the untamed wilderness and the tamed--a barbed wire
fence; a four-wire fence at that, with stout cedar posts whereon the wire was
stretched taut and true.
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