on
horseback at one side of the running animals. At first he imagined
these were Diamond X cowboys who had been in the rear of the steers,
and he thought they had ridden up to help the boy ranchers turn the
stampeded animals. But another look showed him the men who had been in
the rear still in those positions, though they were spurring forward at
top speed.

"Look, Bud!" cried Nort. He pointed to the four figures--there were no
more than that--at the left of the galloping herd.

"Rustlers--Greasers!" shouted Bud. "They started this stampede!"

"What for?" Dick wanted to know. "They can't hope to run off any under
our eyes, can they?"

"They're doing it to get fresh meat!" declared Bud, who never ceased,
all this while, to urge his pony forward, an example followed by his
cousins with their horses. "They think some steer, or maybe half a
dozen, will fall and be trampled to death. Then they'll have all the
beef they can eat--for nothing. They started this stampede, or I'll
never speak to Zip Foster again."

By this time, knowing Bud as they did, Nort and Dick had ceased to ask
about the mysterious Zip Foster. But Nort could not forego the
question:

"How'd they do it?"

"Do what?" grunted Bud, as he skillfully turned his pony away from a
prairie dog's hole.

"Start this stampede."

"Hanged if I know. They might have been lying in wait for us to come
along--hidden out on the range, and they may have all jumped up with
whoops, waving their hats, and setting the steers off that way, when we
didn't happen to be looking. But that's where the disturbance came
from all right!"

With snorts, bellows and heavy breathing the steers came on. Some were
old Texas longhorns, but many of the cattle on the Diamond X ranch, and
the adjacent possessions of Mr. Merkel, had been dehorned. It was
found that more animals could be packed in a car when they had no
interfering horns, and the practice is becoming general of taking the
horns off western stock.

But even though some were without horns, this herd was sufficiently
dangerous. The first thought of Bud and his cousins was to put all the
distance possible between them and the foremost of the steers. This
they had now done. And it was becoming evident that unless some of the
leaders tripped and went down, there was to be no disastrous piling up
of animals one on the other. The leaders ran well, and the others
followed.

The rustlers, if such they were,