"Which way did the critter vamoose?" asked Hoptoad Atkins, quite savagely for such a diminutive specimen of a puncher.
"None of us saw him skip out," admitted Lanky, "But say, he came from over that way," and he pointed toward that part of the sky where some time before the bright star had set beyond the level horizon.
There was an immediate rush on the part of the rustlers, and Frank, on noting their scantiness of attire, could not keep from chuckling. He felt positive he would never see the equal of that picture again, and its memory would always bring a laugh to his lips.
Of course no vigorous search could be made, for many reasons. In the first place, none of the punchers were more than half clad; besides, chasing over the wide stretches of the prairie after such a will-o'-the-wisp as that unknown but slippery runt, was out of the question.
Then again it might be he was only "tolling" them away, so that during their absence he could stampede the horses or accomplish some other species of mischief, such as might take form in a rattlebox brain.
They went as far as the corral, to make sure the ponies were safe, and then came drifting back again, their curiosity having been awakened by seeing Frank hard at work with a spade, enlarging a hole in the ground that some one had dug.
Some of the punchers had gone back into the bunk-house to get into warmer garments, sensing that the end of the strange midnight adventure was not yet. These wise ones came straggling back, to find Frank had handed over his task to the eager Lanky, who was making the dirt fly.
Then came a sudden rifle shot and the thump of a bullet as it buried itself in the tree trunk just over Lanky's head.
Frank happened to be looking in a direction that enabled him to glimpse the distant flash.
"Git tuh kiver!" bawled Jerry Brime.