“Can you see ’em?”
“Did you shoot at any one?”
These questions were shouted at the cowboy who had resorted to such startling methods to attract the attention of his fellows.
“Do you think I’d be sitting here, waiting for you all to come up if I’d sighted the cattle or fired at any one?” demanded the cowpuncher, with fine scorn.
“Then what have you brought us over here for?” demanded the owner of the Double Cross, his anger rising as he began to suspect some trick on the part of his cowman.
“Now, don’t get het up, Sam,” chuckled Deadshot, with a calmness that exasperated his bunkmates. “I ain’t seen the cattle, as I said, but I’ve found their trail.”
“Where, man?” asked Pinky.
Ere the cowpuncher, who was enjoying to the full the whetting of the other’s curiosity, could reply, however, the men rode up to him.
There, stretching away as far as their eyes could see, was a lane, some twenty feet wide, where the fleeing cattle had trampled the grass down as cleanly as though the path through the waving mesquite had been cut.
“Say, they certainly was going some,” exclaimed Sandy, surveying the trail intently. “There must have been at least four or five lifters at their heels to make them steers hit it up like that.”