"It sure will!" agreed his brother, "and we can stay here till snow flies."
"And then you'll want to hit the trail for home," laughed Bud. "Though we don't get as severe storms as they do farther north, nor do they come so early. But it's bad enough, sometimes."
"What's that?" suddenly asked Dick, rising in his stirrups and pointing to two or three figures of horsemen, down in a little swale, or valley. They were evidently engaged in some lively occupation, for they were riding rapidly to and fro, and from a fire, about which knelt three figures, a curl of smoke arose.
"They're stealing some of your cattle now!" cried Nort. "Come on!
We'll capture 'em!"
He spurred his horse forward, an act instinctively followed by his brother. Bud, too, rode after them at a fast pace, but there was a smile on his countenance.
"Keep your shirts on, fellows!" he advised. "That's only some of the Diamond X outfit branding stray calves they come across. But it'll give you a chance to see how it's done."
Riding rapidly across the open plains, where, here and there as they topped little hills the boys could see cattle grazing, the boy ranchers approached the group in the swale. After a quick inspection of the oncomers, the cowboys about the fire went on with what they were doing.
Two of them held down on the ground a struggling calf, while the cow-mother of the little beast, lowing and shaking her head, endeavored to break past two other cowboys who were heading her away from the scene of the branding operations.
For that is what was going on. Some of the Diamond X cowboys had come upon an unbranded calf with its mother as they rode across the prairies. As they were on their employer's land they knew the unmarked animal must belong to him, and it ought to be at once permanently identified as Mr. Merkel's property.
It was the work of but a moment for one of the cowboys to lasso the little bawling creature, and drag it to where he wanted it.