Fadeaway rode his horse into the ford and sat looking downstream as the horse drank.  Just as he drew rein, the old herder imitated with perfect intonation the quavering bleat of a lamb calling to its mother.  Fadeaway jerked straight in the saddle.  A ball of smoke puffed from the cottonwoods.  The cowboy doubled up and slid headforemost into the stream.  The horse, startled by the lunge of its rider, leaped to the bank and raced up the trail.  A diminishing echo ran along the canon walls and rolled away to distant, faint muttering.  Old Fernando had paid his debt of vengeance.

Leisurely he broke a twig from the cottonwoods, tore a strip from his bandanna, and cleaned his gun.  Then he retraced his steps to the burro, mounted, and rode directly to his camp.  After he had eaten he told his son to pack their few belongings.  Then he again mounted the burro and rode toward the hacienda to face the fury of the patron.

He had for a moment left the flock in charge of his son.  He had returned to find all but a few of the sheep gone.  He had tracked them to the canon brink.  Ah! could the patron have seen them, lying mangled upon the rocks!  It had been a long hard climb to the bottom of the canon, else he should have reported sooner.  Some one had driven the sheep into the chasm.  As to the man who did it, he knew nothing.  There were tracks of a horse—­that was all.  He had come to report and receive his dismissal.  Never again should he see the Senora Loring.  He had been the patron’s faithful servant for many years.  He was disgraced, and would be dismissed for negligence.

So he soliloquized as he rode, yet he was not altogether unhappy.  He had avenged insult and the killing of his beloved sheep with one little crook of his finger; a thing that his patron, brave as he was, would not dare do.  He would return to New Mexico.  It was well!

CHAPTER XV

THEY KILLED THE BOSS!

Sundown, much to his dismay, was lost.  With a sack of salt tied across his saddle, he had ridden out that morning to fill one of the salt-logs near a spring where the cattle came to drink.  He had found the log, filled it, and had turned to retrace his journey when a flock of wild turkeys strung out across his course.  His horse, from which the riders of the Concho had aforetime shot turkeys, broke into a kind of reminiscent lope, which quickened as the turkeys wheeled and ran swiftly through the timberland.  Sundown clung to the saddle-horn as the pony took fallen logs at top speed.  The turkeys made for a rim of a narrow canon and from it sailed off into space, leaving Chance a disconsolate spectator and Sundown sitting his horse and thanking the Arizona stars that his steed was not equipped with wings.  It was then that he realized that the Concho ranch might be in any one of the four directions he chose to take.  He wheeled the horse, slackened rein, and allowed that sagacious but apparently disinterested animal to pick its leisurely way through the forest.  Chance trotted sullenly behind.  He could have told his master something about hunting turkeys had he been able to speak, and, judging from the dog’s dejected stride and expression, speech would have been a relief to his feelings.