"We may have to," Bud admitted, "but dad doesn't think I'm old enough, yet, to mix up in a man-sized fight. Maybe he's right, but he always tells me to hold back until I'm needed."
"We can take a hand then, can't we?" asked Nort eagerly.
"Sure thing!" exclaimed Bud. "But there may not be any need of a scrap. These rustlers know they're caught now, and they may run for it. They can't get away with the steers, anyhow, without a fight. Of course if they get Babe covered—and us—they'll make their getaway, but he may bluff 'em off."
"What does it all mean, anyhow?" asked Dick, as the assistant foreman spurred off through the night, following the trail of the now running steers. If there were rustlers driving the cattle away the men themselves gave no sign, but remained hidden.
"It means cattle rustlers—that's all," explained Bud, as he led the way for his cousins to follow, since the young representative of the Diamond X ranch knew the trail. "Rustlers are just men who take other folk's cattle, drive 'em off, change the brands and sell 'em wherever they can. Sometimes they get away with it and sometimes they don't!"
"And are they running off your dad's cattle now?" asked Nort.
"Looks that way," admitted Bud, "though I haven't seen any of the men doing it. You know some of our cowboys drove in a bunch of fat steers from one of dad's distant ranches the other day. They're being taken over to the railroad to be shipped. Not the station where you fellows came in, but another, about two days' trip from here. It's a bunch of these cattle that's being hazed away from us, I reckon."
"I didn't know they hazed steers, like they do college Freshmen," ventured Dick.
"Hazing cattle means to sort of work 'em along easy like—drive 'em where you want to go," explained Bud. "We have to do a lot of hazing when we have the round-up—that's when the cattle owners send their cowboys to collect the animals that have been feeding on the open range during the year. Each man separates into a bunch the cattle with his brands, and also the little calves, or the mavericks, and hazes them toward his corrals."
"What's mavericks?" asked Nort. He could not forbear the question, even though considerable excitement seemed just in the offing. He wanted to learn all he could about ranch life.