“Why, to be sure you did,” cried Bob; “and I remember that we thought perhaps Scotty might be able to follow his tracks back to where he came from; because we believed even then he must have been in the hands of Mendoza’s crowd, since his brand had been burned over.”
“Just what we did,” Frank remarked; “but before anything could be done Mendoza made his raid on our prize herd, and that brought us here on the jump. But if we could follow that marked
trail over the plain and up into the mountains, why not do as well here in the valley?”
“Scotty, you hear that?” asked the stockman.
“You bet I do, an’ I’m going to get some busy right off’n the handle. No use lookin’ away up here, is there?” the cowboy observed.
“Well,” the rancher went on to say, “let’s take it for granted that Old Baldy first tried to get out the regular way, and finding the passage blocked by rocks which a man might easily climb over, but a steer never, he turned around sharp, and put for that other exit, which he had never forgotten in all these years. So, Scotty, take a turn around, and see if you can run across that marked hoof print.”
Frank was not the one to linger when anything of this sort was going on. After all, he might chance to find the track himself in the midst of the multitude that scoured the side of the valley.
“Head back toward the camp!” called out the stockman; “and if either one finds the track, give a call to the rest. We’ll keep close by.”
Bob himself could not help getting down every little while to look at the torn turf, where scores of hoofs had cut in, on the passage of cattle back and forth. Each time he had to shake his head, and smile.
“If it depended on me to run Old Baldy down, I just reckon the herd would stay in here till doomsday,” he admitted to the stockman.