“They’ll see all the cattle penned up in the corrals, then, won’t they?” asked the fat boy, anxiously.
“Easy enough,” replied Donald; “but much good that’ll do them. If they want to, let ’em go back and tell Hatch Walker what we’ve been doing.”
“I really believe you wouldn’t mind much if they
just did take a notion to drop in on us tonight, and make a try to break away with all the long-horns?” Billie observed, as he saw the look on Donald’s dark sun-burned face.
“Oh! I’m not hankering after trouble,” replied the other lad, carelessly; “but if they want to hang around here trying to rob Adrian of his property, why, there’s going to be something doing, that’s right. Times have changed some since the real owner came to Bar-S Ranch. Uncle Fred may have been forced to knuckle down to his wife when some of her folks dropped in to pay a friendly visit, and a bunch of valuable steers followed them off; but we ain’t meaning to do the same. And if anybody thinks so they’re got another guess coming, that’s all.”
“Would you really and truly shoot, if they did try that same,” asked Billie.
Donald gave a little harsh laugh; he shut his jaws firmly together, and nodded his head in the affirmative.
“Wait and see, Billie,” was what he said; “and I’m just as dead sure too, that you’d puncture a rustler in the leg or the shoulder if you got the chance, as that I can eat my share of the grub when the call comes to get busy.”
“Whew! this sounds like real war, I think!” Billie ventured.
“It is war, and war to the knife, until the last