nt its force. The herd stopped and
the cows gazed stupidly about, standing with drooping heads and heaving
sides. Three Bar men showed on both flanks and in the rear. They had
held the drove intact and prevented its splitting up in detachments and
scattering through the night.

Horne and Moore rode over to them and for the first time the girl
noticed that the two men who had wielded slickers out in front of the
run were nowhere to be seen.

"Who was the pair out ahead?" Moore asked. "And what swallowed 'em up?"

Harris shook his head.

"Billie and I were the first to make the front," he said.

"Not any," Moore stated positively. "I saw 'em five minutes before you
two swung round the point. I was wondering who had outrode the
paint-horse and Billie's little nag."

Moore's left side was plastered with mud, as was the left side of his
mount.

"I was on guard and halfway up the far side," he said. "Split Ear took
a header with me and delayed me some."

He pointed to the mud crusted on his clothes. Billie knew that he was
the lone rider she had seen on the flanks of the herd as she rode away
from the wagon. The fall accounted for their Founding the point ahead
of him. Moore was looking off across the country.

"Do you mean to tell me you didn't see those two slickers flapping out
in front?" he demanded.

"I confess I didn't observe any," Harris said. "You're getting spooky,
Moore. A couple of white cows, likely, out ahead of the rest."

Moore regarded him curiously.

"Maybe that's so," he said. "Waving their tails in the air, sort of."
He grinned and turned his horse to head back a bunch that had drifted
out of the herd.

"The boys made a nice ride," Harris said to Horne. "You float round
from one to the next and tell 'em we'll soon have a feed. I'll ride
back and send the wagon up."

Billie rode with him as he skirted the herd and started on the return
trip. Her mind was occupied with the two riders who had slowed the run
and disappeared. There had been something familiar about them, for
every man has his individual way of sitting a saddle as he has an
individuality of gait when on foot. As she had viewed them in the
lightning's flash they had closely resembled Bentley and Carp. But she
decided that this resemblance had been but a fancied one, suggested by
the fact that the two men had been much on her mind of late.

"We're not hurt bad," Harris said. "The boys held them bunched in goo