Jennie, as usual, was in high spirits.  She had been out for a ride during the forenoon, and was now trying to make up for it by taking the burden of most of the work upon her comely shoulders.

In the middle of one of her snatches of song she abruptly paused with the question: 

“Did you hear that, mother?”

“No; to what do you refer?”

“The sound of rifle-firing; something is wrong on the range.”

The two paused and listened, looking in each other’s pale countenances as they did so.

“It is rifle-firing!” said Mrs. Whitney in a scared voice; “what can it mean?”

“Trouble with the rustlers,” replied Jennie, hurrying through the open door to the outside that she might hear the better.  Her mother followed, and the two stood side by side, listening and peering across the wide stretch of undulating plain in the direction of the mountains, whose wooded crests were outlined against the clear spring sky.

There could be no mistaking the alarming sounds.  They were made by rifles, fired sometimes in quick succession, often mingling with each other, and then showing comparatively long intervals between the discharges of the weapons.

“Father said the rustlers were becoming bolder,” remarked Jennie, “and there was sure to be trouble with them before long.”

“It has come,” was the comment of the parent, “and who shall tell the result?”

“It cannot last long, mother.”

“A few minutes is a good while at such a time.  A score of shots have already been fired, and some of them must have done execution.”

“Father, Fred and our two men are unerring shots.”

“And so are they,” responded the mother, referring to the rustlers, who have made so much trouble for the cattlemen of Wyoming.

CHAPTER V.

Looking southward.

Mrs. Whitney and her daughter Jennie stood at the door of their ranch listening, with rapidly beating hearts, to the sounds of rifle-firing from the direction of the cattle-range where the beloved husband and son were looking after their property.

Three shots came in quick succession; then, after the interval of a full minute, two more followed, and then all was still.

Mother and daughter maintained their listening attitude a while longer, but nothing more reached their ears.

“It is over,” said the parent in an undertone.

Aye, the conflict was over.  One party was beaten off, but which?  And how many brave men, the finest horsemen and rifle-shots in the world, lay on the green sward, staring, with eyes that saw not, at the blue sky, or were being borne away by their comrades on the backs of their tough ponies?

A brief space and the story would be told.

Jennie Whitney shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed to the southward for the first sight of returning friends, whose coming could not be long delayed.