"Some of Black Ramon's bunch, for a bet!" roared Bud Wilson, emerging with a lantern and vaulting into the corral.
"Oh, the dirty scoundrels!" he broke out the next instant.
"What is it? What have they done, Bud?" cried Jack, who realized from the usually impassive vaquero's tone that something very much was amiss.
"Why, they've taken the pick of the bunch! Look here, Firewater's gone, my calico, and——"
"But they've left some horses. Quick! Let's get after them. We can overtake them!" urged Mr. Merrill, who had hastily thrown on some clothes, and, followed by the professor, was now down at the corral.
"We can't," wailed Bud; "the precious rascals have hamstrung all the horses they didn't want."
A chorus of furious voices broke out at this. Black Ramon, if it were he or his band that had made the midnight raid, had planned it cleverly. It would be hours before fresh horses could be rounded up from the "remuda," and the poor animals remaining had been crippled fatally. Few minds but that of a Mexican could have conceived of such a fiendish act. The unfortunate animals, uncomplainingly, as is the manner of horses, were lying about the corral, looking up at the men about with mute agony in their large eyes.
"Oh, blazes! if I could get my hands on that greaser!" roared Bud Wilson.
"Steady now, Bud, steady!" said Mr. Merrill, though his own frame trembled with rage at the needless brutality of the raiders. "Hard words will do no good now."
"Let's keep quiet a minute. Maybe we can hear the clatter of their hoofs," said one of the cowboys, a young chap who had come to the ranch from a peaceful California range not long before.