Stony Crossing I could see, even without Mac's guiding finger. The Whoop
Up trail, a brown streak against the vivid upland green, dipped down the
hillside to our right, down to the sage-grown flat, and into the river
by the great boulders that gave the ford its name. The blue ridge up
the river I gave scant heed to; the Writing-Stone was only a name to me,
for I'd never seen the place. My attention was all for the scene at
hand. The patch of soft green that I knew for the cottonwoods Rutter had
spoken of drew my roving gaze whether I would or no. I have ridden on
pleasanter missions than the one that took us to Stony Crossing that
day.
"It's sure tough," I voiced a thought that had been running in my mind
all morning, "to think that a good old fellow like Hank Rowan has been
murdered and left to rot on the prairie like a skinned buffalo. Hanged
if I can make myself really believe we'll find him down there."
"The more I think of it, the more I'm inclined to believe that we will,"
MacRae answered evenly. "We'll know beyond a doubt in the next hour. So
we might as well go on."
If I hadn't known him so well I might have thought he didn't care a damn
what we found at Stony Crossing, that he was as unmoved as the two
case-hardened troopers who rode with us.
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