astness of the sky. He heard no hails
in answer, except the long, shrill one which the coyotes gave from a
neighboring rise of ground.

Smithy Caldwell had disappeared.

Larkin returned to Juliet Bissell perplexed, mystified, and disturbed.
What possible reason could there be for the quixotic actions of the man he
hated more than any other in the world? How did he happen to be received
and at perfect ease among a band of desperate rustlers?

How and why? Caldwell presented so many variations on those two themes
that Larkin's head fairly swam, and he turned gladly to relieve the
situation in which Juliet Bissell now found herself.

CHAPTER X

WAR WITHOUT QUARTER

He found her where he had left her, but now she was standing and looking
out over the silent prairies, as though searching for someone.

"What are you trying to see?" Bud asked.

"I thought father and some of the cowboys would probably follow the sheep
once they had started them. Oh, what have I said?"

"I imagined it was they who had done it," said Bud quietly, the full
enormity of the thing not yet having sunk deep into his mind. "How did you
get mixed up in it?"

"Simply enough," replied Julie. "Late in the afternoon Chuck, one of the
men on the eastern range, came riding in and said that your sheep were
directly east of the ranch house. Father and Mike Stelton talked a lot
about it at supper, and figured up then that the easiest way--well, to
teach you a lesson, they called it--was to run them over the bank of the
Little River.

"I don't like sheep, Bud, as you know; but that was going too far for me,
and I protested, with the result that father took Mike outside with him,
quite upset that I said anything at all. Both of them looked black as a
silk hat."

"Good little girl!" cried Bud gratefully, and she turned her face directly
toward him and smiled; just such a smile, Larkin remembered, as he had
seen her use on other soft nights years before, in circumstances so
totally different.

"After supper," she continued, "there was a great bustle of getting away,
and I grew curious to see what they would do and how. So as soon as they
left I saddled my calico and set out after them, keeping about abreast but
a couple of miles to the north. The next thing I heard was a terrific lot
of shooting and yelling, and the business was done. I don't wonder the
sheep were in a panic!

"Then I heard the sound of the stampede, but I did not realize it