“But how did you get down over the Bar T range?” asked the chief herder.
“We done that at night,” replied Jimmie Welsh, who was a little man with a ruddy face, bright eyes and a crisp manner of speech. “Tell me 156 what’s that ungodly mess up in Little River; it was night an’ we couldn’t see?”
“Two thousand of Larkin’s sheep,” replied Sims, laconically, and an angry murmur ran through the men. “Old Bissell, of the Bar T, stampeded ’em when we were just a-goin’ to get ’em through safe. Shot up one herder, lammed cookee over the head an’ raised ructions generally. Yes, boys, I’m plumb shore we have one or two little matters to ask them Bar T punchers about.”
“But what’s your orders, Simmy?” asked Welsh.
“I’m in charge o’ the hull outfit till the boss shows up an’ can do whatever I want. I’m gettin’ real concerned about him though, not hearin’ a word for a week. I ’low if he don’t turn up to-morrow I’ll have to send you boys lookin’ fer him.”
But the morrow brought its own solution of the problem.
In the middle of the morning a lone horseman was seen approaching over the hills, and the restless sheepmen, eager for any sport, spread out into a veritable ambuscade, taking position behind rocks and in depressions along the hills on either hand.
The horseman was very evidently a poor rider, for, instead of holding the reins easily and jauntily 157 in his upturned right hand, he was clinging to the pommel of the saddle, while the pony slipped and slid along the difficult path.
Within a furlong of the camp, the man’s nationality was made apparent by the flapping shirt and trousers he wore, as well as the black, coarse cue that whipped from side to side.
Among the secreted sheepmen a grin spread from face to face at the sight of this distressful figure, evidently in real wo from hours in the hard saddle. About a hundred yards from camp a single shot rang out, and then there arose such a wild chorus of reports and yells as would have terrified a stone image.