"There's no question about that," was the mandatory reply.
The sober-faced lad took a leaf out of the book of the past—his own or his cattle-stealing father's.
"We got to stampede your stock a few lines, Pete," he said, shortly, to the horse-watcher who had answered Ballard's inquiry. "Get up and pull your picket-pins."
"Is that right, Mr. Ballard?" asked the man.
"It is if Dick says so. I'll back his orders."
The boy gave the orders tersely after the horse-guard had risen and kicked his two companions awake. The night herdsmen were to pick and saddle their own mounts, and to pull the picket-pins for the grazing mule drove. While this was doing, the small plotter vouchsafed the necessary word of explanation to Ballard and Bigelow.
"We ride into the bunch and stampede it, headin' it along the trail the way we're goin'. After we've done made noise enough and tracks enough, and gone far enough to make them fellers lose the sound of us that they've been follerin', we cut out of the crowd and make our little pasear down canyon, and the herd-riders can chase out and round up their stock again: see?"
Ballard made the sign of acquiescence; and presently the thing was done substantially as the boy had planned. The grazing mules, startled by the sudden dash of the three mounted broncos among them, and helped along by a few judicious quirt blows, broke and ran in frightened panic, carrying the three riders in the thick of the rout.
Young Carson, skilful as the son of the convict stock-lifter had been trained to be, deftly herded the thundering stampede in the desired direction; and at the end of a galloping mile abruptly gave the shrill yell of command to the two men whom he was piloting. There was a swerve aside out of the pounding melée, a dash for an opening between the swelling foothills, and the ruck of snorting mules swept on in a broad circle that would later make recapture by the night herders a simple matter of gathering up the trailing picket-ropes.
The three riders drew rein in the shelter of the arroyo gulch to breathe their horses, and Ballard gave the boy due credit.