For the first time Buck Johnson lost his head and his dignity. He ordered the horses.
"I'm going to follow that — — into Sonora," he shouted to Jed Parker. "This thing's got to stop!"
"You can't make her, Buck," objected the foreman. "You'll get held up by the desert, and, if that don't finish you, they'll tangle you up in all those little mountains down there, and ambush you, and massacre you. You know it damn well."
"I don't give a —" exploded Senor Johnson, "if they do. No man can slap my face and not get a run for it."
Jed Parker communed with himself.
"Senor," said he, at last, "it's no good; you can't do it. You got to have a guide. You wait three days and I'll get you one."
"You can't do it," insisted the Senor. "I tried every man in the district."
"Will you wait three days?" repeated the foreman.
Johnson pulled loose his latigo. His first anger had cooled.
"All right," he agreed, "and you can say for me that I'll pay five thousand dollars in gold and give all the men and horses he needs to the man who has the nerve to get back that bunch of cattle, and bring in the man who rustled them. I'll sure make this a test case."