Mayne would fume, but he would save his stock--unless there were other rustlers in league with Steele. Robin didn’t think that likely. Steele was a lone wolf, not a gangster. That was his clearest impression of the man; that Mark stood on his own feet, played his own hand strictly for his own benefit. If Thatcher was in with him it was simply because Steele could use Thatcher to advantage. Somehow, Robin gave little thought to this Texan confederate of Steele’s. In that he made a slight mistake for which he paid later. He had ten miles to make. As he rode the faint uneasiness that afflicted him most of the time around the Block S, a feeling born of the conviction that Mark Steele would make some break when he least expected it, fell away from Robin. The cool evening air was pleasant on his face. He stood in his stirrups and chanted the interminable rhymed history of Sam Bass, who was born in Indiana but who roamed unto Texas a cowboy for to be. Robin was happy. His lusty young voice kept time to the beat of his horse’s hoofs. He was going to see Ivy for an hour or so. Sufficient unto the day---- In a coulee he jumped a bunch of wild horses. As they broke away and tore up the opposite slope Robin spotted among them the gray cow horse he had left a cripple by Cold Spring. In his own round-up mount one horse had gone sore-footed, another had a cinch sore. Robin could not only use another horse but he foresaw tall riding for Dan Mayne, and the gray would be useful. So he fell in behind the broom tails. He had all night to get back. A few miles more or less didn’t matter. He was well mounted but he couldn’t quite head the wild bunch. They raced away northwest from the Bar M Bar and toward the Sutherland ranch as if the devil was on their heels. On the plains as well as the sea a stern chase is sometimes a long one. But after half an hour of headlong galloping he drew up on them. Whereupon the long-tailed mares gave up their frantic effort to get out of the country and settled to a docile trot, permitting themselves to be driven at will. Robin promptly hazed them into a wild-horse corral standing lonely in the creek bottom and there roped the gray. By some kink in his equine make-up the gray had never become properly halter broken. He would not lead as a sensible cow horse should. His progress at a rope’s end was a series of stubborn leg-stiffenings. Robin knew his game. You didn’t lead the gray; you towed him. So Robin saddled him for riding. His other horse would lead at any pace by a grocery cord.