crest
of the hill before it was full daylight, or I guess that they would have
spotted me, though I was lying along the horse like a sack of meal. When
I got to the top of that hill, and it is something like a hill too, the
sort of thing that will work the starch out of poor old Rocky if we take
the wagon that way, the men had disappeared and there was no one in
sight for miles and miles. Presently I saw someone coming towards me
mounted on a jolly fine horse, and I felt quaky from my hat right down
to my boots. Then I caught a gleam of buttons, and I was sure that it
was a mounted policeman; so I cooeyed for all I was worth and he rode
up at a smart gallop to ask me if I had run away from home or what was
the matter."

"What an impudent person!" cried Sylvia wrathfully.

"I don't think that he meant to be impudent," said Rumple, shutting his
eyes with a languid air. "But I suppose it is not a common thing to see
a kid like me doing extraordinary things!"

"Hear him!" cried Nealie, with derisive laughter, clicking her spoon
against her tin plate.

"Well, I suppose that it is a little out of the ordinary for a boy of my
size to do detective work on the track of a mob like those fellows who
rode past us in the night," said Rumple, with edifying modesty.
"Anyhow, he sat up and treated me with real respect when I told him
what I was doing, and at once offered to take the job on for me; to
which, as you may guess, I hadn't the ghost of an objection. So I told
him all that we knew about them, and then I turned round and came back
while he rode off after the men."

"But didn't you see anything of the cattle which bowled us over so
neatly last night?" asked Sylvia.

"No, I didn't, and I can tell you it puzzled me no end, for I went miles
and miles and I did not see so much as the swish of a tail," answered
Rumple, with a dramatic flourish of the broken basin from which he had
been eating his portion of mush.

"Mrs. Warner told me that stampeding cattle will run sometimes for many
miles without stopping, and sometimes they kill themselves by their
exertions," Nealie said as she wriggled into a more comfortable position
against the mattress.

"It struck me as just wonderful what a lot Mrs. Warner knew about
cattle," remarked Sylvia, with a yawn. "Her knowledge made me feel quite
tired; for beyond the fact that a cow had four legs, two horns, and a
tail, I had never realized that there was anything to know about
cattle.