“An’ if Jim hadn’t escaped he’d have been hanged for killin’ Webb.”

“That’s right, sheriff.  On my testimony, too.  Say, let me go to the Governor with these papers an’ git the pardon.  I’d like to give it to the boy myself, jest to show him there’s no hard feelin’s,” urged Wrayburn.

“That’s all right, Dad.  I’m goin’ to be right busy this next week, I shouldn’t wonder.  I’ve got business up in the hills.”

“If you’re goin’ on a round-up, I hope you make a good gather, Prince,” said Snaith, smiling.

Not in the history of Washington County had there been another such a round-up as this one of which Sheriff Prince was the boss.  He made his plans swiftly and thoroughly.  His posses were to sweep the country between Saco de Oro Creek and Caballero Canon.  Every gap was to be stopped, every exit guarded.  Dumont, much against his will, rode beside the sheriff as guide.  Goodheart had charge of the first party that went out.  His duty was to swing round and close the gulches to the north.  Here he would wait until the hunted men were driven into the trap he had set.  Old Reb, with a second posse, started next morning for the head-waters of Seven-Mile Creek.  An hour later the sheriff himself took the road.  He left town sooner than he had intended because Roush had escaped during the night and was probably on his way into the hills to warn the rustlers.

Get them in a talkative mood and old-timers who took part in it will still tell the story of that man-drive in the mountains.  Riders combed the draws and the buttes, eyes and ears alert for those who might lie hidden on the rim rocks or in the cactus.  It was grim business.  Driven out of their holes, the rustlers fought savagely.  One, trapped in a hill pocket, stood off a posse till he was shot to death.  A second was wounded, captured, and sent back with two other suspects to Live-Oaks.  At the end of a week Prince had the remnant of the band surrounded in a mountain park close to Caballero Canon.

The country into which the outlaws had been driven was an ideal terrain for defense.  The brush was thick and tall.  Two wooded arroyos gashed the rim of the valley and ran down into the basin.  An attack against determined men here was bound to prove costly.

Billie knew that three men lay in the chaparral and he believed that one of them at least was wounded.  Old Reb had jumped them up from a fireless camp, and in their hurry to escape the outlaws had left all their provisions and two of their horses.  They left, too, one of the posse with a bullet hole in his forehead.  The sheriff’s plan was to tighten the lines gradually and starve out the rustlers.

But though Prince would not let his men advance to a general assault, he made up his mind to find out more as to the condition of the men he had surrounded.  He wanted to make sure they had not slipped past his guards into Caballero Canon.  In the back of his head, too, was the feeling that if he could get into touch with them, perhaps he might arrange for a surrender.