nd Pete at the southern end
of the line.

But for once Sandy's ears had played him false. Ignorant of the
psychological fact that only when a man's head is turned can he
correctly judge the direction of sound, it being impossible to
distinguish between a sound coming from directly in front or
behind, the foreman of the Three Stars Ranch had been deceived
because he had been looking straight ahead out into the prairie.
And instead of riding toward the men who had roused them by their
cries, each bound of the horses was carrying them farther away.

When Larry and his companions had met the bear, the four raiders
with the cattle Jeffreys had seen were only about two miles in
advance of them. As the boys had thought, the reverberations of
the shots had reached the ears of the men at the rear of the cattle
and they had uttered the wail as a signal to those ahead, jumping
to the conclusion that they were being followed.

Making use of their knowledge of the mountains, the raiders had
hurriedly driven the cattle into the forest, where they would be
out of sight and so could not give warning of the whereabouts of
the thieves, and had then hidden themselves behind some rocks along
the trail. From their ambuscade they would be able to shoot down
their pursuers or capture them as they felt inclined.

But as the reader knows, the boys doubled on their trail and so
divided the trap.

After waiting till dark without any sign of pursuers, the raiders
grew fearsome.

"We've got to find out for sure whether it's somebody on our trail
or just some one that is hunting," declared one of them, who, if
the two brothers could have seen him, they would have recognized as
Gus Megget.

"Considering we've waited more than two hours and no one has showed
up, I say we ought to push onto the Lode, Gus," asserted another.

"How can we drive cattle over this trail in the dark?" growled the
chief of the raiders. "You ought to have more sense, seeing the
trouble we've had to get them as far as this in the daylight."

"So long as we can't drive, we might just as well go back and find
out who's been shooting."

Realizing that it was futile to urge their leader to change his
mind, the other raiders sullenly acquiesced, and, emerging from
their places of concealment, went into the woods to get their
horses and were soon riding stealthily back over the trail.

Though they dared not refuse to go, the men, however, were not
backward in expr