Where the trail snaked over Indian Ridge, ten miles from the ranch house, Loudon pulled up in front of a lone pine tree. On the trunk of the pine a notice was tacked. Which notice set forth briefly that two hundred dollars' reward was offered for the person or persons of the unknown miscreant or miscreants who were depleting the herds of the Bar S and the Cross-in-a-box outfits. It was signed by Sheriff Block. Who the miscreants were no one knew with certainty. But strange tales were told of the 88 punchers. It was whispered that they carried running-irons on their saddles. Certainly they displayed, when riding the range, a marked aversion to the company of men from the other ranches. The remains of small fires had been found time and again in draws bordering the 88 range, and once a fire-marked cinch-ring had been picked up. As the jimmy and bunch of skeleton keys in a man's pocket so are the running-iron and the extra cinch-ring under a puncher's saddle-skirts. They indicate a criminal tendency; specifically, in the latter case, a whole-hearted willingness to brand the cattle of one's neighbour. Loudon read the notice of reward, slow contempt curling his lips. "Signs," he said, gently. "Signs----! What we need is Vigilantes--Vigilantes an' a bale o' rope!" He turned in his saddle and looked back over the way he had come. Fifty miles to the south the Frying Pan Mountains lay in a cool, blue, tumbling line. From where Loudon sat on his horse to the Frying Pans stretched the rolling range, cut by a thin, kinked strip of cottonwoods marking the course of a wandering river, pockmarked with draws and shallow basins, blotched with clumps of pine and tamarack, and humped with knolls and sprawling hills. The meandering stream was the Lazy, and all the land in sight, and beyond for that matter, was the famous Lazy River country held by three great ranches, the Cross-in-a-box, the Bar S, and the 88. Of these the 88 was the largest and the farthest west of the three, its eastern line running along the high-bluffed banks of the Falling Horse, which emptied into the Lazy some ten miles from the 88 ranch house. East of the 88 lay the Bar S, and east of the Bar S was the Cross-in-a-box. The two latter ranches owned the better grazing, the more broken country lying within the borders of the 88 ranch. Beyond the 88 range, across the Falling Horse, were the Three Sisters Mountains, a wild and jumbled tangle of peaks and narrow valleys where the hunter and the bear and the mountain lion lived and had their beings. East of the Lazy River country lay the Double Diamond A and the Hog-pen outfits; north and south stretched other ranches, but all the ranges ended where the Three Sisters began. Loudon swung his gaze westward, then slowly his eyes slid around and fastened on the little brown dots that were the ranch buildings of the Bar S. He shook his head gently and sighed helplessly.