Chapter Nineteen: Bud Rides Through Catrock and Loses Marian

"You'll have to show me the trail, pardner," said Bud when they were making their way cautiously out of town by way of the tin can suburbs. "I could figure out the direction all right, and make it by morning; but seeing you grew up here, I'll let you pilot."

"You'll have to tell me where you want to go, first," said Eddie with a good deal of sullenness still in his voice.

"Little Lost." Without intending to do so, Bud put a good deal of meaning in his voice.

Eddie did not say anything, but veered to the right, climbing higher on the slope than Bud would have gone. "We can take the high trail," he volunteered when they stopped to rest the horses. "It takes up over the summit and down Burroback Valley. It's longer, but the stage road edges along the Sinks and--it might be rough going, after we get down a piece."

"How about the side-hill trail, through Catrock Peak?"

Eddie turned sharply. In the starlight Bud was watching him, wondering what he was thinking.

"How'd you get next to any side-hill trail?" Eddie asked after a minute. "You been over it?"

"I surely have. And I expect to go again, to-nigh! A young fellow about your size is going to act a pilot, and get me to Little Lost as quick as possibe. It'll be daylight at that."

"If you got another day coming, it better be before daylight we get there," Eddie retorted glumly. H hesitated, turned his horse and led the way down the slope, angling down away from the well-travelled trail over the summit of Gold Gap.

That hesitation told Bud, without words, how tenuous was his hold upon Eddie. He possessed sufficient imagination to know that his own carefully discipline past, sheltered from actual contact with evil, had given him little enough by which to measure the soul of a youth like Eddie Collier.

How long Eddie had supped and slept with thieves and murderers, Bud could only guess. From the little that Marian had told him, Eddie's father had been one of the gang. At least, she had plainly stated that he and Lew had been partners--though Collier might have been ranching innocently enough, and ignorant of Lew's real nature.

At all events, Eddie was a lad well schooled in inequity such as the wilderness fosters in sturdy fashion. Wide spaces give room for great virtues and great wickedness. Bud felt that he was betting large odds on an unknown quantity. He was placing himself literally in the hands of an acknowledged Catrocker, because of the clean gaze of a pair of eyes, the fine curve of the mouth.

For a long time they rode without speech. Eddie in the lead, Bud following, alert to every little movement in the sage, every little sound of the night. That was what we rather naively call "second nature", habit born of Bud's growing years amongst dangers