“That depends on how bad the wreck is,” replied the stockman, calmly. “If it is possible to dig a passage in a reasonable time, we may start to work.”
“But if it’s out of the question, sir, will we have to abandon the herd after all our fine work tracking them here?” Bob went on, plainly disturbed.
“We won’t cross that bridge till we come to it,” the Colonel said, with a tightening of his lips that Frank knew of old; “but you can depend on it, my boy, I’ll never abandon my cattle so long as there’s any chance to save them. Our Fall round-up is due shortly now, and I’d feel pretty blue if one-third of my whole stock had been abandoned up here, to be slaughtered by these rustlers in revenge, after we left for home.”
“Because, if we couldn’t get them out, they would be in the same fix, I reckon you mean, sir?” Bob suggested.
“Exactly; and Mendoza would rather kill every steer and cow and yearling than know they had fallen into my hands again. But Scotty ought to be back here very soon now, when we will at least know the worst,” and the stockman looked anxiously up the valley in the direction where he knew the pass lay.
“And there’s something moving right now, dad!” cried Frank, whose keen vision had enabled him to catch sight of the object before any one else.
“That’s Scotty, all right,” pursued Colonel Haywood. “Now he’s making motions, cowboy fashion, and I don’t like the news he’s sending me. It looks like we’re up against it, good and hard.”
“You mean he is telling you the pass has been blown up, sir?” asked Bob.
“Seems as if that must be what he means; but wait till he gets here, and we’ll know the worst,” concluded the rancher; his set jaws and flashing eyes telling how the desperate situation was arousing that old spirit of “never say die” which in times past had always marked his work, and been the means of his present success.
The cowboy came hurrying along as fast as the uneven ground would permit. Straight toward