"Oh, yes. So have I," agreed Nort. "I forgot about them. Whew! It's getting hot," he added, as a shift in the wind brought into their faces a wave of heated and smoke-filled air. "We'd better not keep on any nearer," decided Bud. "Let's ride around to the other side, and see what we can see." Accordingly they turned to the right, as the fire seemed less fierce on that quarter, and continued on. They had been riding over a stretch of the valley carpeted with rich, dark green and fairly damp grass. Bud and his cousins knew that when the fire reached this stretch it would die out for lack of fuel. In fact the blaze, as they could see, was confined to an area about a mile square, but of irregular shape. So far none of the cattle in sight had shown more than momentary fear of the blaze. They had run some distance from it and then stopped, sometimes going on with their eating, and again pausing to look with fear-widened eyes at the sight of the leaping tongues of fire. "But we can't tell what's going on behind that smoke screen," declared Bud. "Some rustlers may have started it to hide their work." "Any of your men over in that direction?" asked Dick. "They aren't supposed to be," Bud replied. "Of course some of 'em may have ridden over when they saw the smoke, same as we did. But I don't see how any of 'em could have reached here as soon as we did." Together they rode on, circling to the right to get around the edge of the fire. "She's dying out," observed Dick. "Yes, it can't burn much longer," admitted Bud. "And no great damage done, either, unless we find something we haven't yet seen." But when they had completed the circuit around the edge of the blazing grass, and could ride across the fire-blackened area, and behind what was still a thick screen of smoke, they saw something which caused them great surprise. This was not the sight of a bunch of stampeding cattle, though it was what Bud and his cousins folly; expected to encounter. There were some cattle on this side of the fire, but they had run far enough away to be out of danger, and beyond where they could be frightened into a frenzied rush. "Look!" exclaimed Nort, pointing. "Four Eyes!" exclaimed Dick. "By the great horned toad and Zip Foster--yes!" agreed Bud, and his cousins knew he must be stirred to unusual depths of feeling to use this name. Zip Foster had not been mentioned in several weeks. The mysterious personage, on whom Bud called in times of great excitement, was almost a stranger, of late, in Happy Valley. In fact Dick and Nort never could get Bud to talk about Zip. But that is a story which will be told in its proper place, and due season. "It _is_ Four Eyes!" went on Bud, as he and his cousins recognized in the form of a distant rider that of Henry Mellon, the new cowboy. "And what he's doing here is more than I can imagine. I'm going to find out, though!"