CHAPTER V.
Into the Lion's Mouth.
Perry Potter, when he had read the foreman's note, asked how long since I left camp; when I told him that I was there at daylight, he looked at me queerly and walked off without a word.

I didn't say anything, either.
I stayed at the ranch overnight, intending to start back the next morning.
The round-up would be west of where I had left them, according to the foreman--or wagon-boss, as he is called.

Logically, then, I should take the trail that led through Kenmore, the mining-camp owned by King, and which lay in the heart of White Divide ten miles west of King's Highway.
That, I say, was the logical route--but I wasn't going to take it.
I wasn't a bit stuck on that huddle of corrals and sheds, with the trail winding blindly between, and I wasn't in love with the girl or with old King; but, all the same, I meant to go back the way I came, just for my own private satisfaction.
While I was saddling Shylock, in the opal-tinted sunrise, Potter came down and gave me the letter to the wagon-boss, an answer to the one I had brought.
"Here's some chuck the cook put up for yuh," he remarked, handing me a bundle tied up in a flour-sack.

"You'll need it 'fore yuh get through to camp; you'll likely be longer going than yuh was comin'." "Think so ?" I smiled knowingly to myself and left him staring disapprovingly after me.

I could easily give a straight guess at what he was thinking.
I jogged along as leisurely as I could without fretting Shylock, and, once clear of the home field, headed straight for King's Highway.