Trail Smoke (Musaicum Vintage Western). Ernest Haycox

of the whip. Surratt let his hand fall from his eyes. He rapped his order at the kid.

      "Turn out that light, punk."

      The kid put his elbows on the table and stared down, with a quick breath disturbing his narrow chest. Surratt slowly reared himself to an upright position; but he didn't have to speak again. The kid bent over the lamp and blew out the flame.

      The sheep had entered the hills without trouble, but not without being observed. On a little bench near the pass, Judith Cameron stood in the dark and watched the pale blur of the herd fill the road and go bleating by. When they had disappeared she turned away and rode rapidly through the rugged folds of this upland country toward the Cameron ranch house. Lower down, near the covered bridge, another spectator held himself back in the brush and silently observed. And long after the sheep band had turned into the upper meadow Blackjack Smith remained in his covert and ruminated over its meaning, his big jaws biting into his tobacco chaw.