He stopped suddenly and listened. Dick and Nort heard, as did Bud, the rapid approach of a horseman. In an instant Bud had switched off his pocket electric light, and then in the half hazy light of the partly obscured moon he and his cousins peered forward. Nort and Dick had drawn their guns, an example set them by Bud.
"Don't do any shooting until you hear me," ordered Bud. "There may be no need of it!"
The rider, unseen as yet, was coming nearer and nearer, the thud of his horse's feet pounding hard on the turf. He seemed to be approaching from the direction in which Babe had disappeared.
In another instant the rider was pulling his horse to a quick stop beside Bud's animal, and when a beam of misty moonlight flashed out from beneath a cloud it was seen that the assistant foreman of Diamond X ranch had returned.
"Oh!" exclaimed Nort, and there was almost a note of disappointment in his voice because the rider did not develop into a cattle rustler.
"Did you see any of 'em?" asked Bud eagerly.
"Not a hair," answered Babe Milton, who proved that he could be active enough when occasion called for it, in spite of his size and weight. "But I heard some one riding off down the gully, and if it was any of our boys, or any of the fellows around here, they wouldn't have run. Besides, these steers belong to the bunch Happy Day is hazin' over to the railroad. They didn't get cut out by themselves."
"Not much," agreed Bud, while Nort and Dick listened eagerly.
"So I'm going on a little farther," said Babe. "You fellows stay here, and if I don't get back in an hour—well, you'll know something happened."
"Can't we come?" asked Dick, eagerly.