rs are," continued
Sims. "I'm plenty sure they wouldn't let us through if we was within a
foot of the river, they're that cussed."

He had hardly got the words out of his mouth when from ahead of the herd
appeared a horseman at a hard gallop, quirting his pony at every few
jumps.

Pulling the animal back on its haunches at the cook-wagon, the rider
vaulted out of the saddle and was blurting out his story almost before he
had touched the ground.

"Up ahead there!" he gasped. "Cow-punchers! Looks like a hundred of 'em. I
seen 'em from a butte. I 'low they've dug fifty pits and they've stuck
sharp stakes into the ground pointed this way. They're ready fer us, an'
don't yuh ferget it."

Sims and Larkin looked at each other without speaking. Now it was plain
that the punchers had had plenty of reason for not molesting them; they
had been preparing a surprise.

"An' that ain't all, boss," went on the rider. "I took a slant through my
glasses, and what d'yuh suppose I seen? There, as big as life, was old
Beef Bissell an' Red Tarken, and a lot more o' them cowmen. How they ever
got there I dunno, but it's worth figurin' out of a cold winter's
evenin'."

This information came as a knockdown. The two men questioned their
informant closely, unable to credit their ears, but the man described the
ranch-owners so accurately that there was no room left for doubt.

"Then what's become o' Jimmie Welsh and his nine men?" asked Sims
wonderingly.

"Mebbe they're captured; but I couldn't see anythin' of 'em."

"Nope," said Bud slowly, "they aren't captured. They're dead. I know
Jimmie and his men, and I picked them for that job because I knew how they
would act. Poor boys! If I get through here alive I'll put a monument
where they died."

He ceased speaking, and a sudden silence descended on all the company, for
the other men had been listening to this report. Each man's thoughts in
that one instant were with Jimmie and his nine men in their last extremity
at Welsh's Butte, although the site of the tragedy was as yet unknown to
them.

"What about the lay of the country?" Sims finally asked of the scout.

"Dead ahead is the big ford, but that is what the punchers have protected.
I could see that either up or down from the ford the water's deep, because
there ain't no bottoms there--the bank's right on top of the river."

"Where is the next nearest ford?"

"Ten miles northeast, this season of the year," was the reply.

"Th