men appeared just as
Stelton fetched Caldwell a kick that sent him half-way across the room.

"Take them both away," ordered the girl, suddenly feeling faint and ill
after the mental and physical struggle of the interview.

When the two had gone she sank back in her chair and faced the awful facts
that these men had given her.

"Bud! Bud! My lover!" she cried brokenly to herself. "I want you, I need
you now to tell me it is all a lie!"

She remained for several minutes sunk in a kind of torpor. Then, as though
she had suddenly arrived at some great decision, she rose slowly, but
determinedly, and left the room. Finding one of the men, she ordered her
horse saddled and retired to change her clothes.

Her mother came in and asked if she were going riding alone.

"Yes, mother," replied the girl quietly. "I am going to Bud and find out
the truth about him. I cannot live like this any longer. I shall go crazy
or kill myself. But I promise you this, that I will find father and bring
him home to you."

The eyes of Martha Bissell clouded with long-suppressed tears.

"God bless you, Juliet," she said. "I can't live without him any longer."

CHAPTER XXII

THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

It was noon and the great column of parched animals and hot, dusty men had
come to a halt under their alkali cloud beside a little stream. The
foot-weary sheep and cattle, without the usual preliminaries, lay down
where they stood, relieved for once from the incessant nipping of the dogs
and proddings of the men.

Sims, walking among the sheep with down-drawn brows, noted their
condition, how gaunt they were, how dirty and weary, and shook his head in
commiseration. Had he but known it he was as gaunt and worn-looking as the
weakest of them. Returning to where Larkin had dropped in the shade of the
cook-wagon, he said:

"We've got to make it to-night if the Old Boy himself is in the way."

Larkin realized the seriousness of the situation. Water and feed were
plentiful, but owing to the hurry of the drive the animals were starving
on their feet. Less than five miles away was the Gray Bull River, the goal
of their march. Once across that and they would be out of the Bar T range
and free to continue north, for the next ranch-owner had gone in for sheep
himself (one of the first to see the handwriting on the wall), and had
gladly granted Larkin's flocks a passage across his range.

"What I can't understand is where all those cowpunche