stock. But stragglers from the main herd would find a big gap
like that in a few hours, and the rustlers lying in wait would hurry
them away. One such loss as that and he would be a disgraced man in the
eyes of Vesta Philbrook, and the laughing-stock of the rascals who put
it through. He rode in search of the Iowa boy who was with the cattle,
his job being to ride among them continually to keep them accustomed to
a man on horseback. Luckily he found him before sundown and sent him for
wire. Then he stood guard at the cut until the damage was repaired.

After that fence-cutting became a regular prank on Kerr's side of the
ranch. Watch as he might, Lambert could not prevent the stealthy
excursions, the vindictive destruction of the hated barrier. All these
breaches were made within a mile on either side of the first cut,
sometimes in a single place, again along a stretch, as if the person
using the nippers knew when to deliberate and when to hasten.

Always there was the trace of but one rider, who never dismounted to cut
even the bottom wire. That it was the work of the same person each time
Lambert was convinced, for he always rode the same horse, as betrayed by
a broken hind hoof.

Lambert tried various expedients for trapping this skulker during a
period of two weeks. He lay in wait by day and made stealthy excursions
by night, all to no avail. Whoever was doing it had some way of keeping
informed on his movements with exasperating closeness.

The matter of discovering and punishing the culprit devolved on Lambert
alone. He could not withdraw Taterleg to help him; the other man could
not be spared from the cattle. And now came the crowning insult of all.

It was early morning, after an all-night watch along the three miles of
fence where the wire-cutter always worked, when Lambert rode to the top
of the ridge where the first breach in his line had been made. Below
that point, not more than half a mile, he had stopped to boil his
breakfast coffee. His first discovery on mounting the ridge was a panel
of fence cut, his next a piece of white paper twisted to the end of one
of the curling wires.

This he disengaged and unfolded. It was a page torn from a medicine
memorandum book such as cow-punchers usually carry their time in, and
the addresses of friends.

_Why don't you come and get me, Mr. Duke?_

This was the message it bore.

The writing was better, the spelling more exact than the output of the
ordinary