“Who—­who—­how was it?  Don’t trifle!”

“Wal, you see Zip Peters rode over from Capt.  Whiting’s to tell us about the rustlers, and he hadn’t much more’n arriv, when along come the others behind him with one of our branded steers.  I made them give him up, and then the fight was on.  Zip got a piece of lead through the body and the arm, and went out of the saddle without time to say good-by.  My hip was grazed twice, but it didn’t amount to nothin’; I’m as good as ever.  Grizzly lost a piece of his ear, but he bored the rustler through that done it, so that account was squared.”

“Then father and Fred were not hurt?” gasped Jennie, clasping her hands and gazing inquiringly into the face of the messenger.

“Wal,” he replied, with the same exasperating coolness he had shown after his first exclamation, “I wish I could say that, but it ain’t quite so good.”

“What—­what of my husband?” demanded Mrs. Whitney, stepping so close that she laid her hand on the knee of the sturdy horseman; “tell me quick; and what of Fred, my son?”

“Fred fought like a house afire; he killed one of the rustlers, but his horse was shot and Fred got it through the arm, which ended his power to do much fighting, but he laid down behind his hoss and kept it up like the trump he is.”

“Then he isn’t badly injured?”

“Bless your heart! of course not; he will be all right in a few days; his arm wants a little nursing, that’s all.  In the midst of the rumpus who should ride up but Mont Sterry, as he had heard the firing, and the way he sailed in was beautiful to behold.  It reminded me of the times down in Arizona when Geronimo made it so lively.  He hadn’t much chance to show what he could do, for the rustlers found they had bitten off more than they could chaw, and they skyugled after he had dropped one.”

The wife and mother drew a sigh of relief, but the daughter was far from satisfied.  A dreadful fear in her heart had not yet been quelled.

Her quick perceptions noticed that Budd had said nothing more about her father than to mention the fact that he had been wounded.  The mother, in her distress and anxiety, caught at a hope as an assurance which the daughter could not feel.

At the same time Jennie saw that, despite the apparent nonchalance of the messenger and his assumed gayety, he was stirred by some deep emotion.

“He is keeping back something, because he fears to tell it,” was her correct conclusion.

CHAPTER VI.

Cowmen and rustlers.

Jennie Whitney saw something else, which almost made her heart stop beating.

To the southward, whence Budd Hankinson had ridden, several horsemen were in sight, coming from the direction of the cattle-ranges.  They were approaching at a walk, something they would not do unless serious cause existed.