They hazed the cattle up the bench, between those gaudy canyons, torn out of the plains level as if by some Gargantuan plow. Robin loped over to the rim of the canyon once for a look down. Cattle were running. He could see the glint and flash of shining horns. Far back a haze of dust showed where Steele and Thatcher were punching up the drag. Robin felt easier. He and Tex were well ahead of that thieving pair. Mark would not be suspicious of spying from above. Nearly an hour after they threw their cattle on the round-up ground Steele and Thatcher came in with a couple of hundred head. They were the last drive. Their horses were rough with sweat, tired. When they rode into camp to catch fresh mounts to work the herd Mark commented on their ride. To Robin it seemed like overdoing the thing. “Ten miles for nothing,” Mark observed to him casually. “There was a lot of stuff in the canyon, but hardly a dozen head in the river bottom.” CHAPTER VII--A RIDER AND A LADY When the Block S hauled in to a camp ground midway between the Bar M Bar and the Sutherland ranch its beef herd numbered close on two thousand head. They were pulling for the railroad. With that herd off their hands one more sweeping of the range between Mayne’s and Big Sandy would end the fall round-up. Robin came off day herd at four thirty of a September afternoon. He was through for the day. He had no guard to stand that night. But when the wrangler bunched the _remuda_ in the rope corral strung from the wheels of the bed wagon, he caught a horse just the same. Steele looked at him inquiringly. Robin half expected him to ask the why of a horse. A cow-puncher free of appointed duty came and went as he pleased, giving no account of his movements unless he chose. A “rep” had even wider latitude. It would not in the least have surprised Robin if Steele had overstepped a range boss’s privilege in regard to his movements. Each day in subtle, silent ways, Shining Mark evinced more of a tendency to “ride” him, and Robin couldn’t get away from the idea that Mark was slowly but deliberately working up to a point where the Bear Paws would not be big enough to hold them both. There was a definite limit to what a man could stand. To keep his peace, avoid friction, until Mark crowded him too hard was the only course Robin could see to pursue. With a little more than two hours’ daylight ahead of him he pointed for the Bar M Bar. Whether Steele showed his teeth or not Robin would be true to his salt. If Shining Mark had been thundering on his trail to start a private war Robin would still have ridden home that night to tell Mayne he had better ride those river bottoms and get his calves before Steele and Thatcher got around to them.