As Papoose topped a low hogback that flanked the valley she saw the men riding toward her down the bottoms, driving twenty or more head of cows. One of the horses threw up his head, his ears pricked sharply toward her, and the swift upward tilt of the rider's hat, as swiftly lowered, informed her that she had been sighted. The other man did not look up. They lifted their horses from a walk to a stiff trot and veered past the cows, then looked up as if just aware of her approach, and waited for her. The men were Bentley and Carp. Bentley greeted her cheerily. Carp nodded without a word. "What are you two doing up here?" she demanded without parley. "I repped with the Three Bar wagon and Carp worked with you for a spell so we sort of know the range," Bentley explained. "Slade sent us up to drift any strays back south." "Those you were driving are Three Bar stuff--every hoof," she said. "All two-year-old she-stock." Bentley turned and regarded the little herd they had just passed. "Them? Sho--we wasn't driving them," Bentley denied easily. "They just drifted ahead of us as we rode down the bottoms. A cow critter will always move on ahead of a man. We rode on past 'em as soon as we decided to amble along." She knew that they were on safe ground. Any cow would drift on before a horseman. "The only way to convict a man on a case like this is to shoot him out of the saddle before he has a chance to pass the cows," she said. "That's what will happen to the next Slade rider that gets noticed with any Three Bar cows moving out in front of him and headed south. You can carry that word to Slade." She whirled Papoose and headed back for the ranch, the intended visit to the Brandons postponed. Harris was piling brush in the lower field when she arrived and she informed him of the act of the two men. "I wouldn't put it past Carp," he said. "But I hadn't sized Bentley up just that way. It's hard to tell. If Carp shows up here again we'll make him a visit in the middle of the night--and he won't trouble us much after that." "We'd better pay Slade a night visit too," she said. Her feelings toward Slade had undergone a complete revulsion. She knew beyond a doubt that he had been responsible for the raid on Three Bar bulls. The wild bunch would have had no object in such a foray. Figuring it from any angle Slade was the only one man who could possibly derive any benefit from that. She had come to see that Slade was fighting with his back to the wall,--that he had run his course and come to the end of it if squatters secured a start in his range, and he considered the act of the Three Bar the opening wedge which would throw open the way for the nesters to crowd him out. The evening of the following day the beef herd trailed into the lower end of the Three Bar valley and bedded for the night. In the morning the trail herd was headed for the railroad under a full crew, for Harris had kept all hands on the job.