she asked.
"I was a goin' back to the corral for a rope I left hangin' on a post there, an' I heard 'em talkin'."
"And you listened, I suppose," remarked Julie contemptuously.
"Mebbe I did," he retorted, stung by her tone. "But you can be thankful for it. I'd be plenty mad if you throw'd yourself away on a man like-a-that. A hoss that'll kill one puncher'll kill another. Same with a man."
"What are you saying, Mike?" cried the girl, frightened out of her attitude of aloof reserve. "Kill a man! He's never killed a man, has he?"
"He didn't say so in so many words, no ma'am, but that talk o' their'n was mighty suspicious."
Unwittingly Stelton had struck his hardest blow. To him, as to other rough and ready men in the West, life was a turbulent existence conducted with as few hasty funerals as was absolutely necessary. But in the girl who had absorbed the finer feelings of a civilized community, the horror of murder was deep-rooted.
She knew that to a man in Larkin's former position the slightest divergence from the well-defined tenets of right and wrong was inexcusable. Crime, she knew, was a result of poverty, necessity, self-defense or lack of control, and she also knew that Bud Larkin had never been called upon to fall back on any of these. How much of truth, therefore, was there in Stelton's innuendoes?
"Would you swear on the Bible that you overheard what you have told me?" she asked suddenly.
"Yes, ma'am, I shore would," Stelton answered with solemn conviction.
There was no question now in her mind but that Larkin was paying the piper for some unsavory fling of which she had heard nothing. She did not for a moment believe that the affair could be as serious as Stelton wished her to imagine; but she was sorely troubled, nevertheless, for she had always cared for Larkin in a happy, wholehearted way.
Many times since her final coming West she had remembered with a secret tenderness and pride that this wealthy and popular young man had been willing to trust his life to her. It was one of the sweetest recollections of those other far-off days.
Now, because the thought of Stelton's revelations was unbearable to her she resolutely put it from her until a time when she could mourn alone over this shattered illusion.
"Thank you, Mike, for telling me this," she said gently. "Please never say anything further about it."
And Stelton, elated that his plan of revenge had worked so well, smiled with satisfaction and relapsed into silence during the remainder of the ride home.
All of these events are set down here with some pretense at detail to indicate the important trend of affairs after Larkin had said a more-or-less indifferent good-by to Juliet Bissell at the fork of Grass Creek. While he was wrestling with material problems, these others that destiny had suddenly joined to him were undergoing mental disturbances in which he was the principal though unconscious factor. And this unconscious prominence was to be the main reason for what next occurred.
It was perhaps noon of the day following Larkin's capture by the rustlers, when from a point directly east of the ranch house a cowboy appeared, riding at a hard gallop. Contrary to most fictions, cowboys rarely ever urge their ponies beyond a trot, the only occasions being the roundup,
Mike Stelton saw the puncher from a distance and walked to the corral to meet him. Jerking his pony back on his haunches, the rider leaped from his back before the animal had fairly come to a stop.
"Mike, we've been tricked!" he cried. "That whole two thousand head of sheep are tracking north as fast as they can go far over east on the range, beyond the hills."
"What!" cried the foreman, hardly able to credit his ears. "The boys down on watch at the Big Horn swore they had scattered the flock last night when Larkin started to run them north on the range."
"Well, they swore wrong, then, for I've just come from where I seen 'em. I was over back of them hogbacks and buttes lookin' for strays and mavericks when along come them muttons in a cloud of dust that would choke a cow. I allow that darned sheepman has made us look like a lot of tenderfeet, Mike."
Stelton at this intelligence fairly gagged on his own fury. Larkin had scored on him again. The two were joined at this moment by Bissell who had noted the excitement at the corral. When apprised of what had happened, the cowman's face went as dark with anger as that of his foreman.
Beef Bissell was not accustomed to the sensation of being outwitted in anything, and the knowledge that the sheep were nearly half-way up the range put him almost beside himself.
For a few moments the trio looked at one another speechless. Then Bissell voiced the determination of them all.
"By the devil's mare!" he swore. "I won't be beaten by any sheepman that ever walked. Stelton, how many men will be in to-night?"
"Fifteen."
"Get 'em and bring 'em to me as soon as they come."
While the foreman went off about this business Bissell learned from Chuck, the cowboy, just where he had seen the sheep last, how fast they were traveling, and how far he calculated they would go before bedding down for the night.
"I reckon the outfit ought to camp somewhere about Little Creek," said Chuck. "That's runnin' water."
"And how far beyond that is Little River?"
"Two miles more or less."
"Fine. Wait around till the rest of the boys come in, Chuck. Oh, by the way, how near are the sheep to our eastern herd of cows?"
"Five miles more will bring 'em to the range the cows are on now."
An hour before supper the rest of the punchers began to come in from riding the range and rounding up strays. Before they were permitted a mouthful, however, Bissell went out to the bunk house with Stelton.
"Boys," he said, "which of you was down at the Big Horn last night an' turned them sheep back?"
A man spoke up and then two more who had been left on guard in the vicinity.
"How many did you scatter?"
"Dunno, boss," replied the first judicially. "From the noise they made I allow there was at least a thousand."
"Well, I bet you a month's wage there wasn't more'n a hundred," said Bissell, glaring at the puncher.
"Won't take yer, boss," returned the other calmly. "Why?"
"Because practically the whole flock is beddin' down at Little Creek now. Chuck seen 'em. Now I want all you fellers to get supper an' then rope an' saddle a fresh hoss. There is shore goin' to be some doin's to-night."
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN IN THE MASK
As Bud Larkin jogged along on Pinte, apparently one of the group of men with whom he was riding, he wondered mechanically why his captors insisted on traveling ten miles to a tree sufficiently stout to bear his weight.
"I should think they'd stand me up and do the business with a bullet," he thought.
But a moment's reflection furnished the answer to this query. These men were cattle-rustlers and horse-thieves, than which no more hazardous existence ever was since the gentle days of West Indian piracy, and to them merely a single pistol shot might mean betrayal of their whereabouts, capture and death.
The character of the country through which they rode gave sufficient evidence of their care in all details, for it was a rough, wild, uninhabitable section that boasted, on its craggy heights and rough coulees, barely enough vegetation to support a wild mustang.
It was three o'clock of the afternoon and behind them the party could still see the place where they had camped. Joe Parker, fearful of stirring about much until the thoughts of range-riders were turning homeward like their ponies' steps, had delayed the departure beyond the hour first intended.
The rustlers really did not want to dispose of Larkin. Being plainsmen, their acute sense of justice told them that this man was absolutely