“I’ll handle it,” Tex said grimly. Then he added almost to himself, “I thought that chestnut stud was the smartest hoss on the range. Never figured he’d trail his herd down into cow country where the boys ride regular.”
“Well, he has and I want that scrub stuff killed,” the major answered.
Tex dragged his saddle into the corral and whistled to his bay gelding. The bay trotted to meet him and Tex let his mouth relax into a grin as he patted the big fellow’s neck.
“I reckon we’ll have to do the dirty work,” he said softly.
Tex picked four men to go with him, men who could handle saddle carbines expertly. He did not want any careless shooting. The kills would have to be clean. When he explained the major’s orders to the men they growled but none of them refused to go. They all shared Tex’s dislike for the job, but they would carry out the boss’s orders.
The execution crew rode away from the ranch with thirty-thirty rifles slapping under their stirrup flaps. The boys who had reported to the major had given the location of the herd. Tex did not expect to find the band where the boys had seen them, but by riding to that meadow they could pick up the trail. Thirty horses would leave plenty of tracks.
Tex speculated gloomily on the foolish turn the habits of the wild band had taken. The big stallion at their head must have lost his cunning or else he had met with disaster and a younger leader had taken his place.
Silently the men rode through the timber and up the long ridges leading out of the lower valley. They entered the aspen belt and took a trail which ran along the top of a rocky ridge. From that ridge they crossed over to another and finally followed a red-granite cliff wall which led them into a narrow meadow. Towering rims of granite formed a half circle around the meadow with scattered spruce close to the wall on the lower side where the meadow broke off into the lower country. The entrance to the narrow valley was grown over by a stand of young aspen trees. Tex hoped to pick up the trail of the herd in this meadow and follow it from there. He halted his men in the dense cover and scowled across the meadow.
At the upper end fed the band of wild horses he sought. They had not moved their feed ground since the boys had first located them. Tex was disgusted with them; they were acting like brood mares in a farm pasture.
“The chestnut stud isn’t running that bunch,” he said gruffly.