“What is it?”
“I’ve lost the herd.”
The Texan shook in his saddle with laughter.
“That’s me, too; the first thing I knowed they was gone. I yelled for you, but you couldn’t have heard me, and, after cantering round awhile, I struck for the wagon in quest of news.”
Avon drew a sigh of relief, and with a smile:
“I’m glad you lost them, for the boys won’t laugh at you, while they would at me.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone in that crowd that will laugh, for they all had the 235 same experience. I know Old Bronze and Short Stop have lost a herd more than once.”
“It won’t do to stay here,” remarked Avon, “for you know there is another herd only a mile off, and if the two become mixed, it will be a big job to cut out ours to-morrow.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Gleeson, “if the cattle have gone back to the bed-ground; at any rate we’ll look for them there.”
The return to the wagon enabled the couple to obtain their bearings, and they knew the proper course to reach the spot, but the possibility of the theory being wrong caused them to separate, so as to proceed thither by routes which, while substantially parallel, were so far apart that they were out of each other’s sight and hearing, the latter being chiefly due to the direction of the wind.