The person thus addressed hurried over the short distance until he was close to where Bud stood rubbing his chin and muttering all sorts of bad words at the delay and pain to which he had been subjected.
"Halloo, Bud, where are you?"
Guarded as the voice was, Fred immediately recognized it as belonging to Cyrus Sutton, the cattle drover.
"I'm here; where would I be?" growled the angry bully.
"Tumbling over a fence, or cracking your head against a tree, I suppose," said Sutton, with a laugh; "when I whistled to you, why didn't you whistle back again, as we agreed to do?"
It is easy to picture the scowling glare which Bud Heyland turned upon Sutton as he answered:
"You're a purty one to talk about signals, ain't you? After answering me half a dozen times, and I got close to you, you must shut up your mouth, and while I went groping about, I came near sawing my head off with a knotty limb. When you heard me, why did you stop?"
"Heard you? What are you talking about?"
"Didn't you whistle to me a while ago, and didn't you keep it up till I got here, and then you stopped? What are you talking about, indeed!"
"I was a little late," said Sutton, who began to suspect the truth, "and have just come into the wood; I whistled to you, and then you called to me in a rather more personal style than I think is good taste, and I came forward and here I am, and that's all there is about it."