g words of approval
now and then.

But once having delivered himself of this relief, the foreman's face set
into its customary ugly scowl, and he snapped out orders to saddle the
horses. Presently a man rode up from the river bottoms and told of the
discovery of many hoof tracks there, and the place where they had waited a
long while.

"I've got it!" bawled Stelton, pounding his thigh. "Larkin's men have
been here and carried off all the owners. Oh, won't there be the deuce to
pay?"

Then he picked out the cowboys who had come with their bosses and added:

"Crowd yore grub and ride home like blazes. Get yore punchers an' bring
grub for a week. Then we'll all meet at the junction of the Big Horn and
Gooseberry Creek. If yuh punchers like a good job you'll get yore owners
out o' this. And I'm plumb shore when we get through there won't be a
sheepman left in this part of the State. To-morrer night at Gooseberry!"

Then was such a scene of hurry and bustle and excitement as the Bar T had
seldom witnessed. The parting injunctions were to bring extra horses and
plenty of rope, with the accent on the rope, and a significant look thrown
in.

By seven o'clock, the time that Larkin, bloody, humiliated and suffering,
would already have paid his penalty, there was scarcely a soul at the Bar
T ranch, for the cowboys had disappeared across the plains at a hard
trot.

The Bar T punchers were sent out on the range to scour for tracks of the
fugitives, but, after following them some distance from the river bottom,
gave up in despair when a night herder admitted that the Bar T horses had
been feeding in the vicinity the night before, thus entangling the tracks.
Meantime the cook was preparing food for the punchers to carry, guns were
being oiled and overhauled, knives sharpened, and ropes carefully
examined.

Yet as the men went about their duties there was a kind of dazed, subdued
air in all they did, for it was, indeed, hard to realize that the ranch
owners of nearly a quarter of Wyoming's best range had disappeared into
the empty air apparently without a sound or protest.

The following afternoon the entire Bar T outfit, excepting a couple of
punchers who were incapacitated from former round-up injuries, swept out
of the yard and headed almost directly east across the plain.

Julie and her mother watched them go and waved them farewell, the former
with a clutch of fear at her heart for her lover and the latter in tears
fo