“That plan, she’s work fine, I bet!” grinned the brother of Tomaso when Johnny had droned off into mumbling and then silence.  “That Tex, she’s smart hombre.”  He laid himself down to sleep again.

Speaking of Tex; that same night he lay awake for a long while, staring at the moon-lighted window and wishing that his eyesight could follow his thoughts and show him what he wanted to see.  His thoughts took the trail to Sinkhole, dwelt there for a space in anxious speculation, drifted on to the Border and beyond and sought out Johnny Jewel, dwelling upon his quest with even more anxious speculation.  Then, when sleep had dulled somewhat his reasoning faculties, Tex began to vision himself in Tucson—­well, perhaps in Los Angeles, that Mecca of pleasure lovers—­spending money freely, living for a little while the life of ease and idleness gemmed with the smiles of those beautiful women who hover gaily around the money pots in any country, in any clime.

For a hard-working cowpuncher with no visible assets save his riding gear and his skill with horses, the half-waking dreams of Tex were florid and as impossible, in the cold light of reason, as had been the dreams of Johnny Jewel in that bunk house.

That night others were awake in the moonlight.  Down at Sinkhole camp five or six riders were driving a bunch of Rolling R horses into the corral where Johnny kept his riding horse overnight.  They were not dreaming vaguely of the future, these riders.  Instead they were very much awake to the present and the risks thereof.  On the nearest ridge that gave an outlook to the north, a sentinel was stationed in the shade of a rocky out-cropping, ready to wheel and gallop back with a warning if any rode that way.

When the horses were corralled and the gate closed, one man climbed upon the fence and gave orders.  This horse was to be turned outside—­and the gate-tender swung open the barrier to let it through.  That horse could go, and that and that.

“A dozen or so is about as many as we better take,” he said to one who worked near him.  “No—­turn that one back.  I know—­he’s a good one, but his mane and tail, and them white stockings behind, they’re too easy reco’nized.  That long-legged bay, over there—­he’s got wind; look at the chest on ’im!  Forequarters like a lion.  Haze him out, boys.”  He turned himself on the fence and squinted over the bewildered little group of freed horses.  He swung back and squinted over the bunch in the corral, weighing a delicate problem in his mind, to judge by the look of him.

“All right, boys.  We kain’t afford to be hawgs, this trip.  Straddle your hosses and take ’em over to that far corner where we laid the fence down.  Remember what I said about keepin’ to the rocky draws.  I’ll wait here and turn these loose, and foller along and set up the fence after yuh.  And keep agoin’—­only don’t swing over toward Baptista’s place, mind.  Keep to the left all you can.  And keep a lookout ahead.  Yuh don’t want that kid to get a squint at yuh.”