Harris pointed to the bunch.
"Look that assortment over well, Billie," he advised. "A few seasons more, with fair luck, and you won't see one of these rainbow droves with every color from brindle to strawberry roan; none of those humpbacked runts; they'll all be gone. That's almost the last mongrel herd that will ever wear your brand. They'll run better every year until we have all big flat-backed beef stock—a straight white-face run."
The third morning out from the home ranch broke stormy. Gray, leaden skies and low scudding, drab clouds drifted over the foothills and obscured the view of the peaks. A nasty drizzle dampened the face of the world and laid its clammy touch on all living things. This condition prevailed all through the day and shortly after the cows had been milled and bedded for the night the drizzle turned to rain, now falling straight and soft, again in fierce squalls whipped by varying shifts of wind. A saddled night horse was picketed for every man. The wagon stood close under a hill while the herd was bedded on a broad flat at the mouth of a valley.
The men lay in the open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as much moisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepee lulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dull muttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and the canvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated by successive flashes. The picketed horses fretted and stamped. Between peals she heard the voices of the night guards singing to soothe their restless charges on the bed ground. One of the men shifted his bed roll from a gathering puddle to some higher point of ground.
She dropped to sleep again but was roused by voices outside as the guards changed shifts and she estimated that it must be near morning, the fourth change of guards.
The sounds ceased as the men who had just been relieved turned in for their sleep. A horse neighed shrilly within a few yards of her teepee. Another took it up and an answer sounded from the flats. There was a crash of pistol shots, a rumble of hoofs and the instant command of Harris.
"Roll out! Roll out!" he called. "Saddles! On your horses."
Even as he shouted there came the swish of wet canvas as the men tumbled from their bed rolls, the imprecations of the suddenly awakened. Billie thrust her head from the teepee flap, the water cascading down her neck. The successive flashes showed the men tugging desperately at boots and chaps, their grotesque, froglike leaps for their tethered mounts. She saw Harris, buckling his belt as he ran, and the next flash showed him vaulting to Calico's back.
The thunder of hoofs drew her eyes to the bed ground where a black mass surged, then bore off up the valley. A scattered line of riders bore down on the herd, two ghostly apparitions among them throwing the cows into a panic of fear. She knew these for riders flapping yellow slickers in the wind. As the light faded she saw three horizontal red streaks cut the obscurity and knew that one of her guards was in the midst of the rustlers, doing his single-handed best. The red splashes of answering shots showed on all sides of him. She tugged on her chaps and boots, slipped Papoose's picket rope and vaulted to his back.
The scene was once more illuminated as she rode from the wagon. A big pinto horse was strung out and running his best, the other Three Bar men pounding after him. A riderless horse circled in the flat, a dark shape sprawled near him, and she wondered which one of her men had gone down. A knot of horsemen were turning up an opening gulch on the far side of the valley. A half-dozen Three Bar riders veered their horses for the spot. Harris turned in his saddle and his voice reached her above the tumult.