“Here, everybody take a torch and hurry to your posts,” ordered Bowser, as his man rode up. “Sandy, you go to the West side; Pinky to the North; Deadshot to the East, and I’ll take the South. Keep, your eyes peeled--and _remember the thousand dollars_!” Even as he spoke, the ranchman touched a match to his torch and when the flame flared up, it threw the four men into bold relief. “How long shall we patrol?” asked Deadshot. “Till I wave my torch in the air. Then ride to the house. We’ll get some grub and pick up the trail as soon as it gets daylight.” Before any of the quartet could take up the task of patrolling the cut fence, however, the cattle thief made himself known. Bang! boomed a gun from the North. In amazement, the cowboys wheeled. And even as they did, a bullet whistled through the air, carrying the sombrero from Bowser’s head. “Douse the torches! It gives ’em a line on us!” cried Deadshot in alarm, lest a second shell might find its man. No urging did the ranch owner or any of his men need to make them obey. The shot had been too well aimed and had come too close to its mark for them to care to make targets of themselves for gunmen who could show such skill at night. But, as they hurled the torches to the ground, the ranchman rose in his stirrups. “You may have the drop on me now!” he roared, shaking his fist in wrathful impotence in the direction whence the shot had come. “But just wait! _Nobody can steal Sam Bowser’s cattle, scare his men, shoot at him and get away with it!_ “_So long as there is a breath of life in my body, I’ll trail you--and I’ll run you to your lair_, mark my word!” The tone in which the owner of the Double Cross spoke, the dim outline of his tall figure as he swayed in his saddle, his arm beating the air in his fury, as he vowed revenge against the miscreants who had stampeded his cattle and tried to murder him, afforded an effect dramatic in the extreme. Yet, scarcely had the last words left his lips than again a gun barked and a bullet “pinged” viciously as it sailed over his head! “Man, dear, but this is _too_ much!” hissed the ranchman. “After them, boys! “_We’ll hit their trail and stay on it till the last skulking coyote of ’em is furnishing food for the vultures!_” CHAPTER IV. PREPARATIONS FOR PURSUIT. As the cowboys, who knew him so well, heard the grim words uttered by the doughty ranchman, they realized that he would keep his vow of trailing the cattle thieves until he had, indeed, run them to their lair. “We’re with you, Sam,” declared the foreman. “That’s what!” chorused the other cowpunchers, while Deadshot added: “There can’t no bunch of cowlifters say they fooled Deadshot Pete--and got away with it!” “But as I was a going to say,” continued Sandy, “it strikes me we ought to round up the cattle and get ’em back before we start out.”