The messenger had been sent ahead to break the news to the sad and anxious hearts.

“Budd,” she said, “you have not told us about father.”

“Why, yes, my dear,” interposed her mother, as if to shut out all evil tidings; “nothing has happened to him.”

“Wal, I’m sorry to say that he has been hurt worse than Fred,” was the alarming response, accompanied by a deep sigh.

“How bad?  How much worse?  Tell us, tell us,” insisted the wife.

“Thar’s no use of denyin’ that he got it bad; fact is he couldn’t have been hit harder.”

The distressed fellow was so worked up that he turned his head and looked over his shoulder, as if to avoid those yearning eyes fixed upon him.  That aimless glance revealed the approaching horsemen and nerved him with new courage.

“Now, Mrs. Whitney and Jennie, you must be brave.  Bear it as he would bear the news about you and Fred if he was—­alive!”

A shriek accompanied the words of the cowman, and Jennie caught her mother in time to save her from falling.  Her own heart was breaking, but she did her utmost, poor thing, to cheer the one to whom the sunlight of happiness could never come again.

“There, mother, try to bear it.  We have Fred left to us, and I am with you.  God will not desert us.”

Hugh Whitney had never spoken after that first interchange of volleys with the rustlers.  He died bravely at the post of duty and was tenderly borne homeward, where he was given a decent burial, his grave bedewed not only by the tears of the stricken widow and children, but by those of the stern, hardy cowmen to whom he had been an employer as kind and indulgent as he was brave.

A few paragraphs are necessary to explain the incidents that follow.

Wherever cattlemen have organized outfits and located ranches cattle-thieves have followed, and fierce fighting has resulted.  These men are known as “rustlers.”  The late troubles caused cattle and horse-thieves to unite against the legitimate owners, and the name now includes both classes of evil-doers.  The troubles in Wyoming were the results of the efforts of the Wyoming State Live Stock Association to put a check upon rustlers who are tempted to steal by the vast profits afforded.

At the time the Association was formed the rustlers were few in number, and confined their acts to branding the mavericks or unbranded yearlings with their own brands.  They did not act in concert, and since the laws of the State require every brand to be registered, in order to establish ownership, the rustlers had as much right to their own brands as the legitimate cowmen.  As long as the mavericks were not openly branded there was no means of stopping them.

It happens quite often that the round-up fails to gather in all the cattle.  The mavericks are allowed to go to the outfit with whose cattle they have run, and that outfit puts its own brand on them.