Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/286

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CHAPTER XXVII
PURSUIT

BRILL YOUNG picked up a trail Sunday morning at Tower W before the special from Medicine Bend reached there. The wrecked express car, which had been set out, had no story to tell. “The only story,” said Whispering Smith, as the men climbed into their saddles, “is in the one from the hoofs, and the sooner we get after it the better.”

The country around Tower W, which is itself an operating point on the western end of the division, a mere speck on the desert, lies high and rolling. To the south, sixty miles away, rise the Grosse Terre Mountains, and to the north and west lie the solitudes of the Heart range, while in the northeast are seen the three white Saddle peaks of the Missions. The cool, bright sunshine of a far and lonely horizon greets the traveller here, and ten miles away from the railroad, in any direction, a man on horseback and unacquainted with the country would wish himself—mountain men

262