But in climbing upward the latter had always unerringly chosen what seemed to be the only possible route; so once the herd started, it could not easily go wrong.
Colonel Haywood had sent a messenger down to the camp with new word for those two daring cowboys who were shouldering the difficult task
of keeping the rustlers penned up during the whole day.
They were to wait for night, and then slip secretly away. Their horses would be left in a certain place for them, and they were ordered to follow the broad trail of the herd until they overtook the main body of drivers.
Up the mountain the drive continued. Constant vigilance was required in order to keep the herd intact. Any little break might prove a serious matter, with that precipitous slope below them, down which a frightened animal would plunge to what must surely prove to be a fatal conclusion.
“I’ve been through some drives in my time,” Bart remarked, after they had pushed along in this way for nearly two hours, and the crest of the ridge was close at hand, “but this sure takes the cake. If we get this herd safe down to level land again I’ll be mighty glad, I’m tellin’ ye, now.”
Bob was himself well pleased when the last of the steers had passed through the little canyon, and started down the outer slope.
The going here was better, somehow, as they all realized before they had been ten minutes following the stock downward. Undoubtedly this was the trail Old Baldy must have struck at the time he and several cows were missing all winter. Following some instinct, he had thus discovered
a way into a Paradise of a valley, where the forage was fine through all the winter months.
“The only thing that surprises me,” remarked Frank, later, when speaking of the matter, “is that Baldy never tried the same game again when winter came along. But perhaps there were reasons. He may have been shut in a corral at the time. Once I remember he was suffering from a sore leg, on account of tearing through a barbed wire fence. But things are looking all right, dad, I should say.”