Also
he searched for roads and then avoided them. It would be a fat
morsel for Marie and her mother to roll under their tongues, he
told himself savagely, if he were arrested and appeared in the
papers as one of that bunch of crooks!
Late that afternoon, by traveling steadily in one direction, he
topped a low ridge and saw an arm of the desert thrust out to
meet him. A scooped gully with gravelly sides and rocky bottom
led down that way, and because his feet were sore from so much
sidehill travel, Bud went down. He was pretty well fagged too,
and ready to risk meeting men, if thereby he might gain a square
meal. Though he was not starving, or anywhere near it, he craved
warm food and hot coffee.
So when he presently came upon two sway-backed burros that
showed the sweaty imprint of packsaddles freshly removed, and a
couple of horses also sweat roughened, he straightway assumed
that some one was making camp not far away. One of the horses was
hobbled, and they were all eating hungrily the grass that grew
along the gully's sides. Camp was not only close, but had not
yet reached suppertime, Bud guessed from the well-known range
signs.
Two or three minutes proved him right. He came upon a man just
driving the last tent peg.
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