there
rang out the frightened bawl of a bewildered calf.

The aspects of the situation took on another hue. If these had been cattle
stampeded by the shots and shouting on the plain, they would have made a
vastly different thundering along the earth. Cattle never ran this way by
themselves; therefore the obvious inference was that they were driven.

Again, the Bar T punchers had no call to drive cattle at night,
particularly this night. Who, then, was driving them? In an instant
Larkin's mind had leaped these various steps of reasoning and recalled old
Beef Bissell's vehement arraignment of rustlers in the State. The answer
was plain. The calves were being driven off the range into concealment by
cattle-thieves.

Larkin knew that all the sheep had not yet passed the top of the hogback.
It was absolutely necessary that their passage be unknown and unobserved.
There was but one thing to do.

Spurring his horse, he charged toward the oncoming animals, whose dark
forms he could now discern a hundred yards away. As he rode, he shouted
and drew his revolver, firing into their faces. When at last it seemed
that he must come into violent collision with them, they turned, snorting,
to the east and made off in the direction of the river.

His purpose accomplished, Larkin wheeled Pinte sharply and dug in his
spurs, but at that instant two dark forms loomed close, one on each side,
and seized the bridle.

"Hands up!" said a gruff voice. "You're covered."

CHAPTER VI

UGLY COMPANY

Larkin's revolver was empty, and his hands mechanically went up.

The captor on his right relieved him of the useless weapon, and, in a
trice, produced a rope, with which he bound the sheepman's arms tightly
behind him. With the other end of the rope turned about the pommel of his
saddle, he dropped back into the darkness, while his companion rode to a
position ahead of Larkin.

At a growled word from behind, the little cavalcade advanced, Larkin
mystified, uncertain and fuming with impotent rage. Never in his life had
he been so needed as he was at that time by Sims and the herdsmen; never
in his life had he so ardently desired liberty and freedom of action.

Why these men had captured him he did not know; what they intended doing
with him he had no idea--although his knowledge of plainsmen's character
supplied him with two or three solutions hardly calculated to exhilarate
the victim. Where they were taking him was almost as much o