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“CUSS take the law!” fumed old Jim Nabours. “I never seen nothing but trouble come out of law. Ef it wouldn’t of been for them Ranger boys we’d of killed Rudabaugh and his outfit right here, and that’d of ended the whole business. Courts? They own the courts; they’ll all be out and at it again inside a week. Ef they meet up with us again I shore hope there won’t be no Rangers. When come it a cowman can’t take care of his own cows?

“But come on, now, Del, push ’em over to the new pens; we got to work this Noah’s ark right now.”

Nabours and Dell Williams slowly edged out a string of cattle, making a point. Swing men rode gently somewhat farther back; others pushed in the stragglers. Quietly, efficiently, with the long skill of men who all their lives had “savvied cows,” they broke the compact mass into a long-strung-out line, traveling quietly in the direction laid out by the leaders. The herd submitted itself to guidance. All went well until they reached the raw new lines of the crude branding chute, when a few of the old mossy horns began to stare and then to roll their tails as though about to break away; but trouble finally was averted.

The swing men crowded and cut the front of the herd to one side of the others. Back of them others began to circle the long procession. In a few moments two herds were made on the flat near the branding pens. In half an hour three irons of the Fishhook road brand, made by Buck the cook, were getting cherry heat in the fire near the chute. Men pushed a thin line of animals out of the smaller bunch, heading them for the fences. Once in the wings, they were crowded into the V till a row of a dozen or twenty stood in single file back of the rising gate. Then, amid swaying that strained the rawhide lashings of the new fence, and to the chorus of bawls of the creatures as the hot irons sizzled into their hides, the Fishhook began to appear above the T. L. holding and owner’s brand.

“Tally one T. L. four! Two T. L. four! One T. L. yearling! One T. L. yearling! One T. L. two!” Sometimes a man would grin as he came back to the fire. “This here T. L. is the only thing I kin see on ary cow so fur!” quoth Len Hersey, top hand. “Ef it wasn’t put on right good we kin fix it some with a runnin’ iron. Keep about two straights in the fire.”

“Tally one three!” came a voice. “Say, Del, this here Fishhook is the plumb catchin’est road brand ary feller ever did see! Does my eyes deceive me?”

Laughter and jests, dust, noise, lowings and groanings, the clack and clatter of cattle moved into the wings, the smell of the herd blending with the odor of singed hair—all the old-time flavor of cattle work in the open—went on now, the thin wedge of tail-twisting, surly brutes pushed out of the chute gate increasing steadily. The nucleus of the Del Sol trail herd grew steadily, until finally the red sun fell below the distant screen of the live-oak groves.

“She pops!” said Del Williams.

“Shore she pops!” assented Nabours. “We’ll get the boss up a herd if we have to make ’em out of red dirt, way God made old Uncle Adam!

“Hello!” he added. “There’s the boss a-coming!”

Indeed, through the dust, wind-carried up the flat, there showed the white feet and front of Blancocito. Taisie Lockhart, again in her range clothing, stained and worn, her hair once more clubbed between her shoulders with a shoe string, rode up soberly, trotting close to the pens.

“How are you, Jim?” said she. “How are you all, men? Where’ve you been three days back?”

Jim Nabours wiped his face on the dirty kerchief he pulled around his neck.

“Where we been, Miss Taisie?” he answered. “Why, we been strolling around with our light geetars amid the cactus, a-rounding up the finest road herd ever put up in Texas.”

“But, Jim, we said maybe beeves—fours or long threes! Look yonder in the chute, man! There’s two fours, that’s all! The rest are twos and calves!”

“I’m Noah, ma’am,” said Jim Nabours gravely. “This here, now, is my ark. Don’t you come horning in. Of course, ef we do got a lot of she-stuff and mixed ages along of the others, how could we help it? Reckon it’s cheaper to iron ’em when you got ’em, ain’t it?”

“But you’re ironing everything, and all in the road brand, calves and all!”

“Ma’am,” said Jim Nabours solemnly, “ef we wasn’t short of hands I’d shore fire the segundo, Del Williams. He’s the onthoughtedest man I ever did see. Now look what he done, him being in a dream! I expect he done run our iron on a dozen or so that ain’t beeves a-tall! And it won’t come off in the wash! Now, how can we get it off? Miss Taisie, as the daughter of the best cowman Texas ever seen, what would you segest fer me to do with Del?”

The girl turned aside to hide a smile that made her cheek dimple.

“Well, I’ve got a pair of eyes,” said she.

“Shore you have, Miss Taisie, and fine ones, too. I wish they was different. But any good cowman has got to have two kinds of a eye—one to tell a brand fur as he can see a critter and t’other not to see no brand that he don’t want to see. Now you go on back to the house, Miss Taisie, and leave us alone, and we’ll turn in up to Aberlene, ef there is ary such place, with the damnedest, evenest, finest bunch of beeves you ever seen, every one in the T. L. and Fishhook, and all of ’em yores. God bless our home!”

He flicked at the white stripe on Blancocito’s hips with the end of his own bridle rein; whereat Blancocito sprang a dozen feet to one side—but Taisie with him, not at all concerned.

“Don’t, Jim,” she protested. “You always treat me like a child.”

“Well, ain’t you?” replied Jim. “Shore you’ll be the richest child in Texas six months from now.”

The girl reined over to where her faithful adjutant stood, led him one side. Her face was troubled.

“Jim——” she began.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Jim, what’s wrong around Del Sol? Something’s wrong!”

“What is it, Miss Taisie?”

She drew yet closer.

“Some one’s been around the house.”

“What? What’s that?”

“Some one’s been in the house! I don’t know just when. You know my little old trunk—I mean the Spanish-leather box with the big hinges?”

“Why, yes, ma’am. I seen it a hundred times in the front room—seen it just the other day.”

“It was in the front room. It isn’t there now.”

“What? What you telling me, Miss Taisie?”

“It’s gone! I missed it to-day.”

“What all was in it?”

“Some things of my mother’s; laces, you know, a silver comb, pictures—and some clothes. That’s almost all, except a lot of old papers. There were bundles and bundles of my father’s old land scrip. He was always buying it, as you know; no one could stop him. He said it would be worth something some day.”

“Miss Taisie, he said right! He told me that land would be worth five dollars a acre in Texas some day; maybe even ten. He said a beef four’d bring twelve dollars here on the Texas range. He said he was going to buy land, all he could get, at five cents a acre, while he could. And he’d of got a heap more in his pasture if he’d lived. And his trunk of scrip——”

“By my mother’s grave!”—the girl rose to her full height in her stirrups, in a sudden tempest of wrath, her right hand high above her head—“I swear I’ll make the drive for him—and her! I swear if I ever find the thief that came in my house I’ll live for my family’s revenge, and for that alone!”

“Jim, they’re robbing us! I know that herd! Do you think I’m blind! Don’t I know cows? Yon’s the leavings, the trimmings, of the Del Sol range! All right! We’ll drive the leavings. My word and my life for it, I’ll be only a man now till all these things are squared! Will you stand by me?”

“You ort’n to ask, Miss Taisie.”

“Jim, now listen! I want every corner of the bunk house searched, every tent, every wagon, every jacal, before we start north. If we find the box we’ll know what to do.”

A Paramount Picture.North of 36.

“JIM, WE’VE GOT TO DRIVE OUR HERDS NORTH—IT’S OUR ONLY SALVATION.”