In twenty minutes Robin was in his blankets, in a camp still all but deserted. Sleep came slowly. When he did fall asleep he dreamed a lot of fantastic stuff in which Mark Steele, Ivy, himself, May Sutherland, dead cows, lonely sage-grown bottoms, herds of T Bar S’s and dancing couples mixed and whirled in a disorderly fantasy. And somehow he seemed to move amid these scenes and persons with his hands tied behind his back, the sport of all the others. CHAPTER IX--A DIFFERENT SORT OF DANCE The first circle the Block S made the next morning covered that portion of the Range between the home ranch and Shadow Butte. Afternoon saw the outfit camped on Little Birch a gunshot above Robin’s homestead. That evening Steele assigned him to “cocktail”, range slang for the short watch on herd between supper and dusk. Then he was slated for middle guard. Even if he had desired to ride down and see Ivy, Robin had no time. He was not sure he should go. Ivy’s anger did not always evaporate like mist in the brightness of her lover’s smile. In another day or two she might be able to laugh at that tantrum. To-night the sun might still be setting on her wrath. When they rode at dawn they passed within a hundred yards of the house. That afternoon the chuck wagon rolled down Birch to a point near Cold Spring. For four days the Block S worked in the heart of Dan Mayne’s range, without Mayne once appearing at the round-up. Usually when the outfit worked his territory the old man rode with them. Robin guessed that Mayne kept away because he couldn’t stand close contact with the man who was stealing his stock. Anyway Robin had his instructions and he knew marketable beef when he saw it. A third of the cattle in each round-up carried the Bar M Bar. Robin cut over a hundred prime beeves into the day herd for shipment. Well below Cold Spring a sprinkling of T Bar S stuff began to show. There was no shipping beef in that brand. But every cow had her calf marked. Once or twice Robin noted a T Bar S calf without a mother, a little bit lean and scraggly--orphans. There would be others, he surmised, which he did not see. One man couldn’t see everything over a territory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. Not once in that region did he spot a Bar M Bar cow with an unbranded calf at side. Nor did Robin again have opportunity to see what Steele and Thatcher did when they took the outside circle by themselves. That happened less often. Robin knew Steele would be wary now anywhere within a few miles of the Mayne ranch. The man might take long chances but he was not a fool. As they worked east of Chase Hill the T Bar S cattle grew more plentiful. “For a man who lives in Helena, who don’t have no rider, who don’t ever show up himself, this here Jim Bond sure gets his stock well looked after,” Tex Matthews remarked to Robin one day. “He’ll do well in the cow business, I reckon.” “How?” Robin inquired. Tex shrugged his shoulders.