"Oh, you're leavin' it t' me, are you?" asked Slim, as he finished rolling his cigarette, a feat he could accomplish with one hand. Then he lighted it, took a satisfying puff and went on: "If you ask my advice I'd say to go back an' see if you can't locate the cattle. As Bud remarks, they're dollars an' cents. Th' rustlers aren't, though it would be a mighty good stunt t' wipe 'em off th' face of this cow country. But maybe we can attend to them later."
"Turn back she is!" exclaimed Bud, accepting, as did the others, the advice of Slim as being final. "We'll see if we can find the cattle, and then haze them to a safe place. After that we'll nab Del Pinzo and his bunch—if we can," he added, as a saving clause.
"Suits me!" remarked Yellin' Kid, taking off his hat and looking at the two bullet holes. "That nabbin' part is what I want t' play at," and his grin suggested that when he and the Greaser met there would be some interesting happenings.
It having been thus decided that the pursuit would be abandoned for the time being, a sort of council of war was held to settle on the next course.
"I say grub!" exclaimed Bud, knowing that the suggestion would come with better grace from him than from some of the men who were working for him and his father. "Let's eat!"
There was no debate on this question and when the ponies had been turned loose to graze on what scanty grass they could find, a fire was made and preparations started for feeding the hungry posse. For they were that—both hungry and a posse, bent on the capture of the lawless rustlers. Though, for the time, righteous revenge was given over to the more practical side of the question—getting back the cattle.
Probably you do not need to be told that little time was wasted over the meal, simple as it was. Cowboys, on the trail, or otherwise engaged in their work of the ranch or range, do not spend much time over the pleasures of the appetite. There is a time for feasting, and a time for chasing cattle rustlers, and there was no sense in combining the two. That, evidently, was the thought in the minds of Bud and his friends, for they hurried through their eating, and, having rested the horses, were soon in saddles again.
"Now," remarked Bud, talking the matter over with Slim, "what is the best plan?"
"To get back, as fast as we can, t' th' place where we saw th' last signs of th' cattle," was the foreman's answer. "The unravelin' of th' skein of mystery, t' use a poetical expression, Bud, is there!"
They all agreed with this view of it, and after a short ride down the defile, to see, if by chance, any of the Del Pinzo crowd might be in evidence, or returning, the back trail was taken.