utfit were corralling the remuda for night-horses. Orders
rang out, and instead of catching our regular guard mounts, the boys
picked the best horses in their strings. The cattle were then nearly
a mile north of camp, coming in slowly towards the bed-ground, but a
half-dozen of us rushed away to relieve the men on herd and turn the
beeves back. The work-mules were harnessed in, and as soon as the
relieved herders secured mounts, our camp of the past few days was
abandoned. The twilight of evening was upon us, and to the rattling of
the heavily loaded wagon and the shouting of the wrangler in our rear
were added the old herd songs. The cattle, without trail or trace to
follow, and fit ransom for a dozen kings in pagan ages, moved north as
if imbued with the spirit of the occasion.

A fair moon favored us. The night was an ideal one for work, and about
twelve o'clock we bedded down the herd and waited for dawn. As we
expected to move again with the first sign of day, no one cared to
sleep; our nerves were under a high tension with expectation of what the
coming day might bring forth. Our location was an unknown quantity. All
agreed that we were fully ten miles north of the Saw Log, and, with the
best reasoning at my command, outside the jurisdiction of Ford County.
The regular trail leading north was some six or eight miles to the
west, and fearful that we had not reached unorganized territory, I was
determined to push farther on our course before veering to the left.
The night halt, however, afforded us an opportunity to compare notes
and arrive at some definite understanding as to the programme of the
forthcoming day. "Quirk, you missed the sight of your life," said Jake
Blair, as we dismounted around the wagon, after bedding the cattle, "by
not being there when the discovery was made that these 'Open A's' were
Don Lovell's cattle. Tolleston, of course, made the discovery; but
I think he must have smelt the rat in advance. Archie and the buyers
arrived for a late dinner, and several times Tolleston ran his eye over
one of the boys and asked, 'Haven't I met you somewhere?' but none of
them could recall the meeting. Then he got to nosing around the wagon
and noticing every horse about camp. The road-brand on the cattle threw
him off the scent just for a second, but when he began reading the
ranch-brands, he took a new hold. As he looked over the remuda, the
scent seemed to get stronger, and when he noticed the 'Circle Dot'