"
"Go on," nodded Anthony.
"Six months, I say, we was ridin' day and night and wearin' out a hoss
about every week of that time. Then we got jest a hint from a bartender
that maybe the Piottos was nearby in that section.
"It didn't need no more than a hint for us to get busy on the trail. We
hit a circle through the mountains--it was over near Twin Rivers where
the ground ain't got a level stretch of a hundred yards in a whole day's
ridin'. And along about evenin' of the second day we come to the house
of Tom Shaw, a squatter.
"Bard would of passed the house up, because he knew Shaw and said there
wasn't nothin' crooked about him, but I didn't trust nobody in them
days--and I ain't changed a pile since."
"That," remarked Anthony, "is an example I think I shall follow."
"Eh?" said Lawlor, somewhat blankly. "Well, we rode up on the blind side
of the house--from the north, see, got off, and sneaked around to the
east end of the shack. The windows was covered with cloths on the
inside, which didn't make me none too sure about Shaw havin' no dealin's
with crooks.
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