Jacker Mack, Peterson, and Parrot Cann had recognised their billies in the heard, but Butts was still missing.  On an open space near the road by which Moonlighter’s gang had come, and at a safe distance from the township, a few of the raiders held the main body of the goats.  Parrot Cann, with a bag of cabbages on his shoulder, was the centre of attraction, and the dropping of an occasional leaf kept the goats pushing about him, some uprearing and straining toward the tantalising bag, others baa-ing in his face a piteous appeal.  Suddenly, however, an astute billy with a flowing beard came to the rescue.  He drove at Cann from the rear with masterly strategy and uncommon force, and brought him down; then in a flash boy and bag were hidden under a climbing, butting, burrowing army of goats, from the centre of which came the muffled yells of poor Parrot clipped in a hundred places by the sharp hoofs of the hungry animals.

Moonlighter promptly led a desperate charge to the rescue, and after a hard struggle Cann was dragged out, tattered and bleeding; but the bag was abandoned to the enemy.

In about twenty minutes Jacker Mack and a couple of subordinates brought up a herd gathered from the hill on the left bank of the creek; Peterson came soon after with a good mob from the right, and Dolf Belman and another followed with a score or so from about the houses.  But still Butts had not been captured.

’You fellers take ’em on slowly,’ said Moonlighter.  Me an’ Gardiner’ll go back an’ have a try after Butts.’  Ted McKnight represented Gardiner in this enterprise.

The hunt for Butts had to be conducted with great circumspection.  The boys crept from place to place; Dick called the goat’s name softly at all outhouses and enclosures, and won a response after a search of over a quarter of an hour, Butts’s familiar ‘baa’ answering from the interior of a stable in a back yard.  Ted was stationed to keep ‘nit,’ and Dick stole into the yard, broke his way into the stable, and was leading the huge billy out of captivity when the savage barking of a dog broke the silence; and then an adjacent window was thrown up and a woman’s voice called ‘Thieves!’ and ’Fire!

Dick had given Butts the taste of a carrot and now fled, dangling the inviting vegetable, Butts following at his heels.

‘Go for it, Ted!’ he yelled, and the two rushed over the flat ground, up the hill, and across the thinly-timbered bush to the road.  A good run brought them up to the main flock, Butts still ambling gaily in the rear, making hungry bites at the carrot hitched under Dick’s belt at the back.

’Rush ’em along!’ cried the panting Moonlighter.  ’We’ve waked the blessed town.  Heel ’em, Cop, heel ’em!