When they were gone out of sight down the Birch Creek flats hazing the calves before them on the run, Robin turned back to Cold Spring. CHAPTER II--“KEEP OFF THE GRASS!” The range cattle had finished their siesta and grazed afar when Robin once more hid among the willows. He was hungry but he had the solace of tobacco. He waited with dogged patience. Perhaps the broom-tails Red Mike ran with would yet come. If not there was always the chance of others. If the cool of evening brought no mount within reach of his loop he could still walk home. So Robin lay thinking about those dead cows and the men who shot them. He couldn’t get rid of the certainty that came over him when silver conchos on bit and spur and saddle flashed in the sun. He knew the man. He was aware that he could be mistaken. Other riders caparisoned with silver ornaments could be abroad on that range. But the first conviction held. Hornets and wild bees hummed among the willows. Meadow larks swooped to the cold water, washed, preened their feathers, swung on low bushes and caroled their sweet, throaty songs within ten feet of him. Pungent odors from sagebrush bruised by hoofs, the faint smell of mud stirred by watering cattle, all the manifold airs off a wide, hot land wafted across his nostrils as he lay there. The sun dipped westward, fiery in the crystal blue. The willows supplied a grateful shade. He grew drowsy, dozed, and was wakened by nickering and the thud of hoofs. Luck had come his way. His sorrel horse stood with forefeet in the mud, drinking from the cold trickle. The band was ranged about the spring. Red Mike had set himself as if posed to receive the waiting loop, within range of a short and easy throw for a hand as true as Robin Tyler’s, whose first toy had been a rawhide string. He made one end of the rope fast to the root of a willow, edged clear, shook his loop out. Then he rose and threw in the same motion and the loop swished over Red Mike’s ears and tightened about his glossy neck before he could so much as toss his head. One frightened surge against Robin’s weight on the _reata_ and the red horse stood still, wide-eyed with surprise, but knowing himself a prisoner. Robin went up to him gently, patted his neck, stroked him, talked to him soothingly. The red horse nuzzled him. When Robin took a turn over his nose with the rawhide the beast followed him like a dog on a leash. Half an hour later he was mounted. Red Mike pranced and side-stepped and pawed the earth with impatience, a thing of steel and whalebone with the fire of life in it and Robin’s spirits rose as if he had drunk wine. The gray fed close by, nursing his lame leg. Robin left him without regret, much gainer by the exchange. Red Mike was his own horse. He had never felt another man’s steel in his ribs. He was worth two of the gray. So Robin turned lightly homeward.