He shook off that slightly pessimistic mood and listened to the crickets, marked a waning moon peep through crevices in the cloud scud that wreathed the sky, as he covered mile after mile, riding fast and unwearied in spite of fifteen hours in the saddle. He wanted to catch his outfit at dawn, before the herd crossed the Judith River. He knew a way to hold those T Bar S’s and yet free his riders for a holiday in town. They were a mettlesome bunch and they liked him; they would back him in anything. Robin valued that unquestioning loyalty. He wanted to hold that crew intact for the fall round-up, if--the ugly thought rose unbidden--he lived to boss the J7 through the autumn months. CHAPTER XXI--A MATTER OF BUSINESS From the high level of the plain above the Judith River Robin looked back, gazing on the scene below and reflecting on the ease with which a range boss could arrange things to suit his own convenience, his own purposes. He knew now why Shining Mark had dared so much and felt so safe until the simple accident of a horse lamed and his rider set afoot had betrayed him. If Steele and Thatcher had not been emboldened by Shining Mark’s absolute control of the Block S range, they would never have shot those Bar M Bar cows in order to steal their calves within twenty miles of home. If they had felt less secure and been a little more discreet Robin would never have dreamed the Block S round-up was run by a thief in his own interest. It was easy to take advantage of the wide trust and power a cow outfit must necessarily repose in men. Adam Sutherland didn’t know what he, Robin, was doing, what he might do if given full opportunity. It rested solely on the personal integrity of the man trusted. The response to that unqualified trust bred at once the peculiar devotion of the cow-puncher to his salt and by contrast gave rise to the sweeping depredations that once in a blue moon shook some individual cattle owner’s faith in men. “Here am I,” thought Robin, as his eye dwelt on the Judith looping silver through a sage-gray and meadow-green valley in which the PN ranch buildings and the white tents of the J7 were mere specks, “here am I with the old man’s check for five thousand in my pocket, another five or six thousand to my order in a Fort Benton Bank, and me hellin’ off on a pure gamble--and the old man don’t know anything about it.”