He gained a corner of the cook house unseen. From there it was only a step or two to the meat house. Chance favored him. A light burned in the place. Charlie stole up and peered through a screened window. The same brusque cook he had spoken to that morning was slicing steak on a block. Back of him, in rows, hung quarters of beef. At least six head of dressed beef hung from the pointed hooks in the beams above. Charlie knew beef on the hoof, in the round, in the pen. They were prime steer quarters, as good beef as ever went into Chicago. Nothing in that meat house had come out of that herd of scraggy cows. That was certain. He stole back to his horses. Clear of the camp, he paused to look back, frowning at the scores of lights--yellow dots against the darkened plain. If he had read the sign right, first at the burning coal seam and now here, some enterprising persons were collecting a lot of easy money. Charlie knew how Rock Holloway felt about such things. No man likes to have his pocket picked. It is poor satisfaction merely to know how the picking is done. Charlie suspected that Rock felt very much as old Elmer Duffy had felt when he blew up over the hides in the grass, only he sympathized with Rock, and he still held that old Elmer had no business to insult him. Yes, Rock would feel like the Saturday shopper whose purse has been snatched--he would be furiously eager to get his hands on the snatcher. And the burden of Charlie’s thought was how this could be done. Lightning seldom strikes twice in the same place, but thieves frequently do, especially range thieves. It was this conviction that sent Charlie loping away southward in the dark. Twenty-five miles is no great matter to fresh horses. Charlie swung in on the Benton-Sweet Grass Trail, held it till he was abreast of the burning coal seam, then turned straight east. By midnight the ghostly flicker wavering above that incandescent crevice was a beacon before him. He skirted it, moving slowly, with a watchful eye, and dropped into the draw. When he judged that he was within a few hundred yards of the old corral, he dismounted, hobbled both horses, and left them. They wouldn’t stir after that ride. He could easily find them again. Then he took his carbine in hand and stole toward his destination, as cautiously as if he were stalking a wolf. He had, indeed, the certainty that he stalked not a lone wolf but a pack, and he was well aware that wolves have teeth. The wolves he sought might be hunting, and they might not. The old corral loomed before him. Keeping close under the southern bank, he was one with the night. A shadow lay where he moved. One stealthy step at a time. He reflected that a hunch is a strange thing. When it worked properly it gave curious results.