“Don’t believe he’d dare hurt Miss Beulah, Rutherford.  Meldrum belongs to the coyote branch of the wolf family.  I’ve noticed it’s his night to howl only when hunters are liable to be abed.  If he’s in this thing at all, I’ll bet he’s trying to play both ends against the middle.  We’ll sure give him a run for his white alley,” Dingwell concluded.

“Hope you’re right, Dave,” Rutherford added in a voice rough with the feeling he could not suppress:  “I appreciate it that you boys from the Lazy Double D came after what has taken place.”

Dave grinned cheerfully.  “Sho, Hal!  Maybe Beaudry and I aren’t sending any loving-cups up to you and yours, but we don’t pull any of that sulk-in-the-tent stuff when our good friend Beulah Rutherford is lost in the hills.  She went through for us proper, and we ain’t going to quit till we bring her back to you as peart and sassy as that calf there.”

“What part of the country do you want us to work?” asked Ryan.

“You can take Del Oro and Lame Cow Creeks from the divide down to the foothills,” Rutherford answered.  “I’ll send one of the boys over to boss the round-up.  He’ll know the ground better than you lads.  Make camp here to-night and he’ll join you before you start.  To-morrow evening I’ll have a messenger meet you on the flats.  We’re trying to keep in touch with each other, you understand.”

Rutherford left them making camp.  They were so far up in the mountains that the night was cool, even though the season was midsummer.  Unused to sleeping outdoors as yet, Roy lay awake far into the night.  His nerves were jumpy.  The noises of the grazing horses and of the four-footed inhabitants of the night startled him more than once from a cat-nap.  His thoughts were full of Beulah Rutherford.  Was she alive or dead to-night, in peril or in safety?

At last, in the fag end of the night, he fell into sound sleep that was untroubled.  From this he was wakened in the first dim dawn by the sound of his companions stirring.  A fire was already blazing and breakfast in process of making.  He rose and stretched his stiff limbs.  Every bone seemed to ache from contact with the hard ground.

While they were eating breakfast, a man rode up and dismounted.  A long, fresh zigzag scar stretched across his forehead.  It was as plain to be seen as the scowl which drew his heavy eyebrows together.

“’Lo, Charlton.  Come to boss this round-up for us?” asked Dingwell cheerily.

The young man nodded sulkily.  “Hal sent me.  The boys weren’t with him.”  He looked across the fire at Beaudry, and there was smouldering rage in his narrowed eyes.

Roy murmured “Good-morning” in a rather stifled voice.  This was the first time he had met Charlton since they had clashed in the arcade of the Silver Dollar.  That long deep scar fascinated him.  He felt an impulse to apologize humbly for having hit him so hard.  To put such a mark on a man for life was a liberty that might well be taken as a personal affront.  No wonder Charlton hated him—­and as their eyes met now, Roy had no doubt about that.  The man was his enemy.  Some day he would even the score.  Again Beaudry’s heart felt the familiar drench of an icy wave.