Scott Burton on the Range

by Edward G. Cheyney

Scott turned Jed toward home and Baxter rode away to warn his herders to be on the lookout for possible interlopers.

Scott thought it safest to go back to the chute before he tried to hunt up the bands. There was nothing to prevent them from driving the sheep back through the chute, if they could get them there without being seen, and it would be difficult if not impossible to prove that they had ever been on the forest at all. The thought made him nervous and he let Jed swing along over the ridge at a lively pace. He stopped at the cabin for a moment but there was as yet no sign of Heth.

“Fine help for me, that fellow is,” Scott growled as he rode on down to the chute. “Mr. Ramsey said that he knew all there was to know about sheep. Probably knows all about that extra four thousand, too.”

He searched the ground around the chute anxiously. There were no new tracks. Scott heaved a sigh of relief. He felt sure that they would not get by Baxter on the west, they had not crossed the ridge trail to the north, they had not been to the chute on the east, and the valley cliffs were on the south. They must be inside of that quadrangle where they had been the day before, but Scott thought he would drop around that way to see which way they were moving.

He was starting out once more when a snort from Jed attracted his attention to some hoof prints. They were fresh and showed very distinctly in the dusty sheep track. Two horsemen had ridden that way. Instead of following the regular trail up past the cabin to the ridge they had turned westward soon after passing the chute and skirted the edge of the valley cliffs. Scott followed the tracks a little way along the sheep trail but soon lost them when they turned off into the brush. He was not interested in horse tracks, it was sheep that he was looking for.

But he had not gone very far on his way when he pulled up suddenly, hesitated an instant and then rode back to the chute. He dismounted to examine the hoof prints more carefully and straightened up with a puzzled look on his frowning face. Heth’s horse had lost a shoe from its near front foot and the tracks in the dust showed the same missing shoe.

“I wonder what he is doing skylarking around this district and avoiding the cabin?” he mused to himself. “Must be that he does not like my company. Well, I am starting out in his direction and may have to force myself on him whether he likes it or not.”

He rode slowly forward again, thinking over the question which he was determined to make Heth answer when he finally got him cornered. He followed the dusty sheep trail and kept a sharp lookout both to the south toward the valley cliffs and on the ground, for he wanted to know whether the horsemen kept to the rim of the cliffs or turned north to the ridge trail.

Before long his careful watch was rewarded. The plain hoof prints of a horse crossing the sheep trail from south to north were distinctly registered in the dust. He searched the trail for some distance but there was only the one horse and it was not the one with the missing shoe. The prints had been made only a short time before. In one place where the rider had apparently used the spur the hoofs had gouged deeply into the ground and the bottoms of those tracks had not completely dried out.

“That must mean that Heth is going to stay down there on the bench,” Scott thought and he left the sheep trail which was turning slightly to the northwest, so he could keep a better watch on the rim of the cliffs. The forest was open here and by following along the face of the lower slope he could keep a good lookout on the flat bench below. Any one passing that way would be in plain view while he himself would be partially concealed by the forest.