The sentinel came trotting around the corner.  “How many?” he asked, riding alongside the other.

“Fifteen, all told.  To-morrow night we’ll cull that bunch that ranges west of here.  Won’t do to trim out too many at a time, and they may be back here to-morrow night.  They will if they can’t get it over.  I don’t much expect they will, at that—­unless they bring it in pieces.  Still, yuh can’t tell what a crazy kid’ll take a notion to do; not when he’s got a bug like Tex says this one has got.”

“Tex is pretty cute, aw-right.  Me, I’d never a thought of that.”

The boss grunted.  “Tex is paid for being cute.  He’s on the inside, where he’s got a chance to know these things.  He wouldn’t be worth a nickel to us if he wasn’t cute.”

“And it’s us that takes the chances,” readily agreed the guard.

“Yeah—­look at the chance I took jus’ now!  Talked to old Sudden over the ’phone, stalling along like I was the kid.  Got away with it, at that.  I’d like to see Tex—­”

“Aw, Tex ain’t in it with you.  When it comes right down to fine work—­” So, feeding the vanity of the boss with tidbits of crude flattery, which the boss swallowed greedily as nine tenths of us would do, they jogged along down the pebbly bottom of Sinkhole Creek where it had gone dry, turned into the first rocky draw that pointed southeastward, and so passed on and away from the camp where Tex’s thoughts were clinging anxiously.

When they had carefully mended the fence that had been opened, and had obliterated all traces of horses passing through, they rode home to their beds perfectly satisfied with the night’s work, and looking forward to the next night.

A hot, windy day went over the arid range; a day filled with contented labor for some, strenuous activity for some others—­Johnny Jewel among these—­and more or less anxious waiting for a very few.

That day the fifteen stolen horses, urged forward by grimy, swearing Mexicans and a white man or two, trotted heavily southward, keeping always to the sheltered draws and never showing upon a ridge until after a lookout had waved that all was well.

That day Mary V rode aimlessly to the western hills, because she saw three of the boys hiking off toward the south and she did not know where they were going.

That day Johnny Jewel suffered chronic heart jumpings, lest the four wide-blinkered mules look around again and, seeing themselves still pursued by the great, ungainly contraption on the lengthened wagon they drew, run away and upset their precariously balanced load.

That day the man who had so obligingly answered the telephone for Johnny busied himself with various plans and preparations for the night, and retraced the trail down the rocky draws to the fence where horses and riders had crossed, to make sure, by daylight, that no trace had been left of their passing, and met Tex over by Snake Ridge for a brief and very satisfactory conference.