" said the boy. "They-all ain't sech tenderfoots as to keep on
comin' when we've stopped. Want to dodge 'em?"

"There's no question about that," was the mandatory reply.

The sober-faced lad took a leaf out of the book of the past--his own or
his cattle-stealing father's.

"We got to stampede your stock a few lines, Pete," he said, shortly, to
the horse-watcher who had answered Ballard's inquiry. "Get up and pull
your picket-pins."

"Is that right, Mr. Ballard?" asked the man.

"It is if Dick says so. I'll back his orders."

The boy gave the orders tersely after the horse-guard had risen and
kicked his two companions awake. The night herdsmen were to pick and
saddle their own mounts, and to pull the picket-pins for the grazing
mule drove. While this was doing, the small plotter vouchsafed the
necessary word of explanation to Ballard and Bigelow.

"We ride into the bunch and stampede it, headin' it along the trail the
way we're goin'. After we've done made noise enough and tracks enough,
and gone far enough to make them fellers lose the sound of us that
they've been follerin', we cut out of the crowd and make our little
_pasear_ down canyon, and the herd-riders can chase out and round up
their stock again: see?"

Ballard made the sign of acquiescence; and presently the thing was done
substantially as the boy had planned. The grazing mules, startled by the
sudden dash of the three mounted broncos among them, and helped along by
a few judicious quirt blows, broke and ran in frightened panic, carrying
the three riders in the thick of the rout.

Young Carson, skilful as the son of the convict stock-lifter had been
trained to be, deftly herded the thundering stampede in the desired
direction; and at the end of a galloping mile abruptly gave the shrill
yell of command to the two men whom he was piloting. There was a swerve
aside out of the pounding melee, a dash for an opening between the
swelling foothills, and the ruck of snorting mules swept on in a broad
circle that would later make recapture by the night herders a simple
matter of gathering up the trailing picket-ropes.

The three riders drew rein in the shelter of the arroyo gulch to breathe
their horses, and Ballard gave the boy due credit.

"That was very neatly done, Dick," he said, when the thunder of the
pounding hoofs had died away in the up-river distances. "Is it going to
bump those fellows off of our trail?"

The water-boy was humped over the horn