“But what if those strange men are Bar B riders?” he argued the point with himself. “Or what if Boyce is not at home, or more likely starts his tongue wagging at me and stirs the Irish before I get out the news? I’d ride away and let Peterson put through the steal—if Boyce makes me mad enough. And the time is short for a ride to the Bar B and back again to Castle Creek soon enough to stop them. “Morenci, you’ve the mark of a good cow pony in the way you handle yourself on range inspection, and if you work fast enough, I’m thinking we can handle this little matter alone; though it’s little encouragement I’ve lately received for playing the patron saint to old Boyce. Still, there’s a way to work it that appeals to my sense of humor, and it’s that we’re going to do. So shake a leg, Morenci! You’ve a lot of violent exercise between you and your feed box to-night.” And Patrick O’Neill, for the first time that day, whistled under his breath, as he galloped, to show how content he was with his mission. CHAPTER VI. A QUICK CHANGE. Later Pat O’Neill did not whistle, though he still rode in haste. The afternoon was older than he had suspected when he rode up out of Bad Cañon and across the high grazing ground that lay between his fishing place and Lodgepole Basin. He had a plan which he felt would work beautifully, if only he had time for it; but now with the sinking of the sun, he was not so sure. A great deal depended upon his horse, and he had not spared the animal in his roundabout ride to cut the homeward trail of Peterson and his men. “First, I must be sure that Boyce’s steers are safe,” he decided, and crossed Limestone Creek with a splash and a clatter of hoofs on the stones. “It’s a new range the Bar B cattle are on, and if I can read the mind of cow brutes, they have traveled as far down the creek as they can go. They will not be satisfied to stay at the upper end of the bottom where the grass is quite as good, but must range farther in the vain hope of finding range that pleases them better. At any rate, it’s worth the gamble.” As he opened the wire gate in the drift fence which separated Drew’s range from Boyce’s on Castle Creek just above its junction with Limestone, the parklike basin was dusky with the coming of night, but as he led his horse through, closed the gate and remounted, a steer snorted dew from its nostrils not far away. O’Neill turned and rode that way, peering down satisfiedly at the dark forms of the Bar B beef steers bedded down on a rise of ground just back from the creek and the mosquitoes and close to the fence. “What did I tell you, Morenci? Now, rout them up and we’ll haze them on down the fence toward Picket Pin. If it’s through a fence they want to travel, they may try the other side of the fence on Picket Pin and welcome—and the farther they drift, the safer they’ll be, though it will make more work for the Bar B riders.”