“Unless I miss my guess, they’re fires, too,” he
said to himself. “And when that one flamed up just then I sure saw what looked like a cabin just back of it. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if that Mendoza has got a regular little colony planted right here! This must be where he lives when he isn’t out rustling cattle, and running off with the saddle bands belonging to ranches. Talk about nerve, would you!”
Of course, as they advanced along the side of the valley, the sounds that had come so faintly to their ears when beyond the barrier now grew more positive. Cattle could be heard, trust the experienced ears of cowboys for detecting their presence. Then, besides, voices sounded, as men called out to one another; while the fellow who twanged the mandolin persisted in his efforts to practice on the airs he possibly meant to sing the next time he went courting down below the Mexican border.
That the rustlers had been in this place a long time, unsuspected by any of the stockmen, or even the State authorities, Frank soon had positive evidence.
“Say, what’s this mean?” asked Bob, as they came to what seemed to be a barbed wire fence, six strands high.
“It’s a corral to keep the cattle in, at times, perhaps while the branding is going on,” answered his chum, familiar with all such devices.
“I wager then that Old Baldy broke through it,” Bob declared.
“I wouldn’t think that impossible, because he’s done it many a time in the past,” Frank whispered in his turn. “But how did you guess it?”
“Because I noticed, Frank, that he was considerably torn along one of his shoulders, and the marks looked fresh, just as barbed fencing always jabs a steer,” went on the other.
“Good for you, Bob; glad you had your eyes about you that time,” Frank said; for it always pleased him to find that his chum was observing little things, such as serve as straws to show which way the wind blows.