CHAPTER XII.
THE BACK TRAIL.
Mont Sterry had wisdom enough to turn to the fullest account the remarkable advantage gained through the sagacity of his mare.
His pursuers, in their haste to head him off, had dashed across the arroya at a point only a short distance above where he entered and their leader emerged from it.

They were sure to discover the truth in a short time.
Waiting, therefore, only until they had passed beyond, he rode his horse a few rods along the depression, and then left it on the same side by which he had ridden into it.
Unconsciously he fell into an error of which he was not dreaming.

In the short distance passed, the arroya made a sweeping curve, and he had repeatedly changed his own course since leaving the Whitney ranch.
Thus it was almost inevitable that he should get the points of the compass mixed, and that he should follow a route widely different from the one intended.
Had he paused long enough to note the position of the full moon in the heavens, or the towering Big Horn Mountains, he would have gained an approximate idea of where he was; but, despite his experience in the West, he galloped forward at an easy canter, with never a suspicion of the blunder he was making.
He was on the alert for rustlers, and kept glancing to the right and left, and to the front and rear.

As has been shown, he had little fear of being overtaken in a chase where he was given an equal chance with his pursuers, but his narrow escape rendered him more apprehensive than usual.
"I thought of staying with Weber and Hankinson to-night," he mused, "but I think it hardly prudent.

The rustlers may pay them a visit, and my presence will only make matters worse; and yet those fellows don't want to start up a band of regulators who will shoot them down without mercy, and that's just what will take place if they carry their outrages too far." "My death won't bring the regulators into existence," he grimly reflected, "for one man, more or less, doesn't count; but there is much bitter feeling in the country." Once he thought he caught the sounds of horses' feet on the prairie, and checked his mare to listen, but she gave no evidence of suspicion--a thing she was sure to do, if the cause existed.
Sterry was so well satisfied by this fact that he did not dismount to test the matter as before.