“We think we saw a bunch of riders far away to the south, an hour back,” one of the cowboys answered; “and hitting it up for all they were worth. If so be the rustlers had a saddle band outside the valley somewhere, then that must ’a been the crowd we saw. No danger of them comin’ back again.”
“Well, on the whole, it’s just as well,” remarked Colonel Haywood; “though there are those who have suffered at the hands of Mendoza in the past who would much rather see him a prisoner, and sent to the penitentiary for a long term.”
“I reckon he’d never get thar,” remarked Bart, with a smile and a nod, that Bob, though a greenhorn, could easily interpret to mean that the cow men knew of a better way to settle the rustler so he could never again raid their herds.
CHAPTER XIX
STARTLING NEWS
“It promises to be a bully day for the round-up, Frank!” remarked Bob, just forty-eight hours after the morning that saw them near the foot of the Thunder Mountain Ridge, and driving the recovered herd homeward, after rescuing it from the cattle rustlers of the dreaded Mendoza.
“Just what it does,” replied his chum, who was sitting on his buckskin pony, and looking out to where a band of punchers were circling around the first bunch of cattle that would require attention.
Colonel Haywood had been hearing from the neighboring ranches ever since they reached home. In a side corral he had all the cattle taken from the rustlers, outside of those which he recognized as his own property. Here the other stockmen tried to pick out certain steers and cows which had been stolen from them recently.
The original brands had been destroyed, and a new one burned on the flanks of the animals. Evidently these steers had been intended for shipping at the first favorable opportunity for reaching the railroad, on the part of the rustlers.
By degrees two-thirds of the recovered stock had been claimed. The balance was likely to remain in the hands of the Circle Ranch people, since there was no means of identifying it.
Having made all his arrangements for the Fall round-up, Colonel Haywood did not allow such a little matter as his encounter with the rustler band to disturb his well laid plans.