A DISCOVERY
As soon as Scott was dressed in the morning he hurried out to see if he could find any tell-tale tracks of the man who had shot at him the night before. Much to his surprise he found the distinct prints of a horse’s hoofs. He had taken it for granted the night before that it was one of the disgruntled sheep herders, but none of them had horses. Then he thought of the horseman who had tried to steal Jed a few days before. He ran anxiously to the corral and was soon reassured by a cheerful nicker in response to his whistle.
All through breakfast he turned over in his mind the problem of the entrance of the four thousand sheep, the warning shot fired by the mysterious stranger the night before and the prolonged absence of Heth. He could not solve any of them to his entire satisfaction, but he came to several important conclusions. He decided that it would be necessary to watch the sheep herders who were in the forest just as closely now to keep them from running the extras off of the forest before the recount, as he would have to do to keep them from bringing other extras on. He also decided to see Baxter and get his coöperation.
He could ’phone Baxter and get him to meet him half way but one could never tell who might be listening in on those party lines and he wanted to keep his business pretty much to himself for the next few days. And so it was that he saddled Jed and rode away to take a chance on finding Baxter, and he thereby greatly disappointed an impatient and anxious gentleman who had been hanging onto a receiver for over an hour hoping to discover his whereabouts.
Jed was feeling very lively that morning and made the gravel fly along the old ridge trail, across the broad valley and up the long slope to the patrolman’s cabin on the next district. He was fortunate in catching Baxter just as he was starting out for the day.
“Hello, there,” Baxter called gayly, “something doing so soon after sun up?”
“This something started long before the sun got up,” Scott replied. “I’ve started something over my way that looks as though it would keep me pretty busy for a while, and I want to know whether you can help me to carry it through?”
“You bet I can,” Baxter cried eagerly, “I’m pining away for lack of excitement. What is it?”
“Well, to begin at the beginning, somebody beat me to the report on those sheep. I had not much more than gotten home the other day after I left you than the super called me up, said that Dawson had told him that the boys had run a bunch of sheep in on me up the cañons in the valley cliffs, and called me down hard for not preventing it.”
“Up the cañons,” Baxter exclaimed, “I never examined them, but I never supposed that sheep could get up there.”