“Sure, I understand all that, Frank, because you’ve told me lots of times; but then Domino doesn’t seem to get on to it,” Bob replied, with a laugh. “He pulls as if he belonged to a fire engine, and had heard the alarm. Hold up there, you Blue-Grass exile; before the day is done you’ll have all the exercise you want, I reckon.”
“There’s a fine bunch of our cattle grazing down by the stream yonder,” remarked Frank, pointing with the quirt which was fastened to his left wrist, cowboy fashion.
“And this is about as far as they’re allowed to roam, isn’t it?” asked Bob.
“Yes, some of the boys have been keeping watch on this lot all night,” Frank replied. “See, there’s a fellow now, waving his hat, and whooping at us. That must be Chesty Lane. Say, you can just depend on it he’s feeling some bad that he can’t ride with us. Chesty is always hungry for something to happen. When things run too smooth he just has to get away, and look for excitement somehow.”
“It was down through that rocky coulie that last pack of wolves crept, when they played such hob with the calves, wasn’t it?” Bob inquired, after they had answered the wild cheers of the “puncher” who was serving as guardian to the herd.
“Yep!” said Frank. “But the chase was swift, and not a single one of the pack ever got away. I knocked over a hairy thief myself, and that’s the skin on the floor of my room. It’s nearly as big as the pelt you got, when we tracked old Sallie and her whelps to their den, and you shot her.”
“Wolves are getting scarce around here, Frank, what with the ranchmen offering bounties for every scalp, besides what the state pays!”
“Oh! there are always a few coming down from the mountains,” replied the other. “Up there they have breeding places where no man can ever find ’em. But we have no cause to complain about wolves nowadays. It’s the rustlers that bother us most.”
“That crowd under the Mexican, Pedro Mendoza, you mean,” Bob went on.
“Yes, they have some secret hiding place that as yet has never been discovered. Some believe they come all the way up from Mexico, but my dad never would take to that idea. And he declares that the next time any of the Circle cattle are driven off, he’s going to camp on the trail of the thieves, and keep on following them if it takes him down to Chihuahua.”