“Oh! you mean that they were trying the best they knew how to head off the herd and start them to milling; was that it?” Billie went on; for he had managed to pick up considerable information connected with a cattle ranch during the time he had spent on the border with his cousin, down in Arizona.
“On the other hand,” Donald remarked, still more solemnly, “it struck me they were yelling like that to make the long-horns more frightened than ever; because they whooped like wild Injuns off their reservation, and in for a gay old time.”
Billie gave it up. His wits were inclined to be a little dense at best; and on being so suddenly aroused from a sound sleep, to witness this strange passing of a stampeded herd of cattle, he was hardly in a fair condition to do himself justice when it came to figuring what a mystery meant.
“I throw up the sponge!” he hastened to say; “somebody’ll just have to take hold and whisper what it all means; because for the life of me I ain’t able to get a grip on the thing. What’s the answer, fellows? Cowboys awhooping things up, and making more work for themselves by scaring the life half out of their cattle. Say, that’s a silly thing to
do, strikes me, now, boys. Tell me what possesses the chump to act that way? And be quick about it, because when I’m that curious it’s dangerous to leave me groping in the dark. Don’t you know fellows have been known to pine away to nothing just because they kept aworrying about something. Donald, what’s it mean?”
“Adrian you tell him, while I get that little electric torch we used to find so valuable; I’d like to step out and take a look at that dead steer, now that the danger’s gone past.”
The roar of many hoofs was dying away by degrees in the near distance, showing that the herd must still be on the full run, and as filled with fright as when the boys saw them sweep past.
“Why,” began Adrian, as the other hurried back to where the red embers of the little camp-fire glowed like a wakeful eye among the trees, “all I can say, Billie, is that the herd was in a panic, and had been frightened. If there were punchers galloping along, as both Donald and I think we made out, they didn’t seem to be trying to head the cattle off, or turn them, but kept in the rear, or the flank, and yelled just to keep them hustling. Now do you catch on, Billie?”
“Rustlers, you mean, Adrian; cattle thieves carrying off a bunch of the long-horns!” ejaculated the astonished Billie. “Just to think of running on a game as old as that the very first thing we
come up here? Why, I thought that was only a practice along the border, where the rustlers could drive the stolen cattle over into Mexico, and be safe from pursuit.”