What he could not read were the brands involved nor the faces of the two men. The three dead cows, dark lumps in the gray sage, the three well-grown calves hog-tied for the running-iron that made little wisps of blue smoke puff from their ribs, were an open book to him. It was as old as the cow business, that trick. It originated in Texas in the chaos following the Civil War. In the years since it had been intermittently practiced with varying success from the Pecos River to the Canada line--and beyond. Robin knew the _modus operandi_. You had a few cattle on the range. You owned a duly registered brand. You rode abroad in lonely places, where range riders seldom came except when the round-up swept through. Having found a cow with a desirable calf you shot the cow, roped the calf, ran your brand on him and hazed the orphan off two or three miles from his dead mother. Then you rode on and repeated the operation. Presently, if you were wary, well-mounted, a good roper, and craftily evaded being caught in the act, your natural increase assumed great proportions. The cow, being dead, could not embarrassingly claim a calf bearing a brand not her own. A dead cow here and there on the range excited no comment. Cows died from a variety of causes. The cattleman knew that to his sorrow and the cowboy accepted dead cattle as he accepted the sun and the wind and rain, as natural properties of his environment. Only--when too many cows were found to be dying of sudden death there were sure to be riders abroad with Winchester carbines under their stirrup-leathers. It was apt to be unhealthy for those who sought to augment their herd by other than natural increase. Since every rustler knew that, he himself was not likely to permit any one to view his activities with rope and iron and depart untroubled. Hence Robin Tyler lay very quiet in the grass. He was unarmed, to begin with. He was not sure he wished to know the identity of those two men, the brands on the dead cows nor the fresh iron marks on the calves. That knowledge spelled trouble. Somehow Robin had a distaste for trouble of a personal nature. He had seen plenty. He wasn’t combative. He seemed to have little of that primitive instinct to fight, to kill, to harry other men, which crops out now and then in even highly civilized persons. Yet, as he stared at the two men in the silent flat, now flinging themselves across their saddles to start the stolen calves to new feeding grounds afar, he felt a touch of resentment. He had an intuitive knowledge of what brand could be read on those dead cows, because he was sure he knew one of the men--the flash and glitter of sun on silver ornaments as the rider’s horse wheeled and danced under the restraining bit gave Robin this unwelcome knowledge; unwelcome, because if confirmed, it was knowledge upon which he would have to act, if he dared. Would he dare? He didn’t know.