The second-in-command would say no more, but a few days gave token of the coming storm. As they pulled in at the upper ranch, where cowboys and "station-men" did duty all the year, the stray men from other outfits threw in with them again and increased their number to a scant twenty. Bar Seven was there, after a return to his own headquarters, and several of the other men; but the men who dwelt in the hills were of a different breed, with hair long and beards scrubby, and overalls greasy from lonely cooking; and they looked at Bowles askance. "Who's that feller?" they asked; and the answer was always the same, if they asked it of a Texan. "Oh, that's a young English dude," they said. "He's got his eye on Dixie." Strange how these men of the frontier were so quick to read his heart--Bowles had talked with Dixie Lee only twice in a month but they had read him like a book. Or perhaps it was just plain jealousy, since they, too, had their eyes on Dixie--jealousy and a sneaking knowledge that he had a chance to win. They cast appraising glances at his expensive saddle, his silver-mounted spurs and eleven-dollar Stetson, and hated him for his prosperity; they watched him work in the corral, and scoffed at him for his horsemanship; and when he talked, they listened to his broad "a's," his soft "r's" and his purling "er's" with wonder and contempt. Not that they listened very much, for they took pains to break in on him as grown folks do when a child is speaking; but they curled their lips at his coming, and exchanged glances behind his back, and finally, as the work progressed, their hostility began to take form. For three days the outfit lay at headquarters while fresh horses were caught and shod; and here Hardy Atkins and his followers suffered the humiliation of losing their mounts. As top hands they had taken the pick of the remuda, the fleetest runners, the gentlest night horses, the best-reined cutting horses; but now in the reapportionment they found themselves reduced to "skates and bronks." Three days of shoeing the skates, and especially the bronks, did not tend to sweeten their tempers any, and as they moved up to Warm Springs and began to rake the range the spirit of rebellion broke loose. Warm Springs lies at the bottom of a gash in the face of the mesa, and the cow-trails lead to it for miles. Above there is no water, below it is shut in by the rim of the canon, and the cattle file down the long trail day and night. Consequently the nearby grass is fed down to the roots, and the remuda had to be held up on the high mesa. All day the horse wrangler grazed his charges in distant swales, bringing them in for water and the horse-changing morning and noon; and at night the cowboys watched them beneath the cold stars--that is, when they kept awake. On the second morning three horses were missing, the next day two more, and on the next eight horses more were gone and several men were practically afoot.