the oldest men being detailed as horse wranglers.  Reese was sent with a hundred and fifty men to left flank the grove, deploying his men as far back as the second bottom, and close his line as the drive moved forward.  Billy Edwards was sent with twenty picked men down the river five miles to the old beef ford at the ripples.  His instructions were to cross and scatter his men from the ending of the salt plain to the horseshoe, and to concentrate them around it at the termination of the drive.  He was allowed the best ropers and a number of shotguns, to be stationed at the cattle trails leading down to the water at the river’s bend.  The remainder, about two hundred and fifty men under Lynch, formed a long scattering line from the left entrance of the horseshoe, extending back until it met the advancing line of Reese’s pickets.

With the river on one side and this cordon of foot and horsemen on the other, it seemed that nothing could possibly escape.  The location of the quarry was almost assured.  This chaparral had been the breeding refuge of wolves ever since the Cimarron was a cattle country.  Every rider on that range for the past ten years knew it to be the rendezvous of El Lobo, while the ravages of his nightly raids were in evidence for forty miles in every direction.  It was a common sight, early in the morning during the winter months, to see twenty and upward in a band, leisurely returning to their retreat, logy and insolent after a night’s raid.  To make doubly sure that they would be at home to callers, the promoters of this drive gathered a number of worthless lump-jawed cattle two days in advance, and driving them to the edge of the grove, shot one occasionally along its borders, thus, to be hoped, spreading the last feast of the wolves.

* * * * *

By half past ten, Encampment Butte was deserted with the exception of a few old cowmen, two ladies, wife and sister of a popular cowman, and the captain, who from this point of vantage surveyed the field with a glass.  Usually a languid and indifferent man, Miller had so set his heart on making this drive a success that this morning he appeared alert and aggressive as he rode forward and back across the plateau of the Butte.  The dull, heavy reports of several shotguns caused him to wheel his horse and cover the beef ford with his glass, and a moment later Edwards and his squad were seen with the naked eye to scale the bank and strike up the river at a gallop.  It was known that the ford was saddle-skirt deep, and some few of the men were strangers to it; but with that passed safely he felt easier, though his blood coursed quicker.  It lacked but a few minutes to eleven, and Cave and his detachment of beaters were due to move on the stroke of the hour.  They had been given one hundred rounds of six-shooter ammunition to the man and were expected to use it.  Edwards and his cavalcade were approaching the horseshoe, the cordon seemed perfect, though scattering, when the first faint sound of the beaters was heard, and the next moment the barking of two hundred six-shooters was reechoing up and down the valley of the Salt Fork.