From where Loudon sat on his horse to the Frying Pans stretched the rolling range, cut by a thin, kinked strip of cottonwoods marking the course of a wandering river, pockmarked with draws and shallow basins, blotched with clumps of pine and tamarack, and humped with knolls and sprawling hills. The meandering stream was the Lazy, and all the land in sight, and beyond for that matter, was the famous Lazy River country held by three great ranches, the Cross-in-a-box, the Bar S, and the 88.
Of these the 88 was the largest and the farthest west of the three, its eastern line running along the high-bluffed banks of the Falling Horse, which emptied into the Lazy some ten miles from the 88 ranch house. East of the 88 lay the Bar S, and east of the Bar S was the Cross-in-a-box. The two latter ranches owned the better grazing, the more broken country lying within the borders of the 88 ranch.
Beyond the 88 range, across the Falling Horse, were the Three Sisters Mountains, a wild and jumbled tangle of peaks and narrow valleys where the hunter and the bear and the mountain lion lived and had their beings. East of the Lazy River country lay the Double Diamond A and the Hog-pen outfits; north and south stretched other ranches, but all the ranges ended where the Three Sisters began.
Loudon swung his gaze westward, then slowly his eyes slid around and fastened on the little brown dots that were the ranch buildings of the Bar S. He shook his head gently and sighed helplessly.
He was thinking partly of Kate and partly of her father, the gray old man who owned the Bar S and would believe nothing evil of his neighbours, the hard-riding 88 boys. Loudon was morally certain that forty cows within the last three months had transferred their allegiance from Bar S to 88, and he had hinted as much to Mr. Saltoun. But the latter had laughed him to scorn and insisted that only a few cows had been taken and that the lifting was the work of independent rustlers, or perhaps of one of the other ranches. Nevertheless, in response to the repeated urging of his foreman, Bill Rainey, Mr. Saltoun had joined with the Cross-in-a-box in offering a reward for the rustlers.
Loudon was well aware of the reason for Mr. Saltoun's fatuous blindness. That reason was Sam Blakely, the 88 manager, who came often to the Bar S ranch and spent many hours in the company of Kate. Mr. Saltoun did not believe that a dog would bite the hand that fed him. But it all depends on the breed of dog. And Blakely was the wrong breed.
"He shore is a pup," Loudon said, softly, "an' yellow at that. He'd steal the moccasins off a dead Injun. An' Block would help him, the cow-thief."
Then, being young, Loudon practised the road-agent's spin on the notice of reward tacked on the pine tree, and planted three accurate bullets in the same spot.
"Here, you! What yuh doin'?" rasped a grating voice in Loudon's immediate rear.
Loudon turned an unhurried head. Ten yards distant a tall man, black-bearded, of a disagreeable cast of countenance, was leaning forward across an outcrop.