seldom left Mead's face, but his lips
were closely shut in a way that brought out lines of dogged
resolution. He was determined that the cattle company should recognize
as their right whatever claims he and his neighbors should make.
Tuttle and Ellhorn talked over the situation with him many times, and
they were as determined as he, partly from love of him and partly from
lust of fight, that the cattle company should be vanquished and
compelled to yield whatever was asked of it. But they took the
situation less seriously than did Mead, looking upon the whole affair
as something of a lark well spiced with the danger which they enjoyed.

Ellhorn heard one day that Jim Halliday was at the Fillmore ranch
house, and they decided at once that his business was to lay hands
upon Mead. It was also rumored that several people from Las Plumas had
been riding over the Fernandez plain and the foothills of the
Fernandez mountains trying to find Will Whittaker's body or some clue
to his disappearance. The three friends learned that all these people
had been able to discover was that he had left the ranch on the
morning of his disappearance with a _vaquero_, a newly hired man who
had just come out of the Oro Fino mountains, where he had been
prospecting, in the hope of making another stake. A man had seen them
driving down through the foothills, but after that all trace of them
was lost. Old Juan Garcia and his wife, past whose house the road
would have taken them, had been away, gathering firewood in the hills,
but Amada, their daughter, had been at home all day, and she declared
she had seen nothing of them, and that she did not think they could
have gone past without her seeing them. It was accordingly argued that
whatever had happened must have taken place not far from the junction
of the main road with the road which led to Emerson Mead's ranch, and
all that region was searched for traces of recent burial.

CHAPTER VIII

The round-up was almost finished, and, so far, Emerson Mead had won
the day. Backed always by his two friends, he had compelled the
recognition of every general claim which had been made, and in most of
the daily quarrels his side had come out victor.

Toward the end of the round-up, Mead and two _vaqueros_, accompanied
by Tuttle and Ellhorn, had worked all day, getting together a
scattered band of cattle, and at night had them bunched at a water
hole near the edge of his range. The next day they were