Nor, when the party made camp, at dusk, among the foothills, had the big young collie rejoined them. Joel Fenno scoffed at Mack’s show of anxiety about the absent Treve. Yet, Joel discovered now that he had dropped his pipe, somewhere along the route; and fussily he insisted on riding back through the dark to look for it. He was gone for three hours. On his return he grumbled at his failure to find the missing pipe--which, by the way, he had been smoking throughout his three-hour absence. “Didn’t see or hear anything of Treve, back yonder, did you?” queried Mack, from among the blankets. “Treve?” repeated Joel, grouchily. “Nope. Never thought to look for him. Likely he’s gone on ahead; and we’ll find him at the ranch house. He’s a lazy cuss. Likely he’s scamped his work and trotted on home. Nope, I never bothered to look for him. It was my pipe I was huntin’. Not a measly dog.” He cleared his throat contemptuously. His throat was rough and raw from repeated shoutings of Treve’s name, during his three hours of futile hunt for the missing collie. Treve was not at the ranch house, when the herders got there, next afternoon. Fenno was loud in derision, when Royce Mack insisted on riding back over the mountain trail in quest of the lost dog. But Mack went. And he found nothing. Meanwhile, Treve was in serious trouble. Toni and the other shepherds had grown unspeakably weary of the lonely mountainside life; and yearned for the ranch with its nearness to a town. The bunk house was a bare eleven miles from the 1,500-population metropolis of Santa Carlotta. Thus, their work of driving the sheep down the trail, toward the valley, was marked with more haste than care. But for the presence of their two employers, they would have done the driving in a far more precipitate and slipshod way. At it was, at every possible chance, when Royce and Fenno were engaged elsewhere along the line of march, they sacrificed care to haste. At one point, thanks to this over-hurrying, a large bunch of wethers, at the rear of the procession, bolted. They streamed backward, up the trail, and they scattered to every side of it in fan-formation. It was heartbreaking work to get them back. Fenno and Treve had gone to help Toni and the little black Zit in the thanklessly hard task. “All here?” Joel had demanded, when the round-up of the strays seemed complete. “All here!” glibly announced Toni; and Fenno rode forward. Toni had been certain all were there;--chiefly because he wanted to believe so. Hence, he did not trouble to count the bunch of galloping wethers. He knew that both Treve and Zit had worked the underbrush and the upper trail, in search of the wanderers; and he knew both were absolutely reliable sheep dogs. Zit was back with him again. And Treve, presumably, had trotted ahead with Fenno. Toni knew Treve would not have given up the search while any strays were left unfound. The delay had been long. The Basque herder was cross and hungry.