“Stampede!” yelled a hoarse voice.

“Stampede—­hell!” shouted another.  “It’s rustlers!  That damn Antrim bunch!”

This was Shorty.  The lithe giant had rushed out of the bunkhouse as the herd thundered past.  He was now running back toward the bunkhouse, trying to tighten the waistband of his trousers with a belt whose buckleless end persisted in eluding his grasp.

His words had spurred the other men to frenzied action.  There was confusion in the bunkhouse where men collided with their fellows as they plunged about for discarded garments, gun-belts, and boots.  But soon they began to straggle out of the door in twos and threes and singly, racing for the corral and for the lean-to where they kept their saddles.

Foremost among them was Shorty.  His tall figure appeared first at the corral gates, and his long legs were the first astride a horse.  While the others were running hither and yon near the bunkhouse and the corral, Shorty raced his horse to the ranchhouse, slid off and crossed the wide porch in two or three leaps.

He was confronted at the door by Mrs. Lawler, ashen, trembling.

“Rustlers!” he said, shortly, answering her look of interrogation.  “Where’s the boss?”

The woman’s voice broke.  “Sheriff Moreton came after him some hours ago—­and took him to Willets—­charging him with murdering those two men at the line cabin, last winter.  He isn’t guilty, of course,” declared the mother; “but of course he had to go with Moreton.”

Shortly swore silently.  “All right, ma’am,” he said, aloud; “I reckon we’ll have to handle it without him!  Some of the boys of the night herd are hurt, most likely—­mebbe worse.  If you’d sort of look after them—­mebbe—­” He broke off short when he saw riders rushing from the corral toward the house.  “I’ll stop at Joe Hamlin’s place an’ send Ruth over, to help you.  We can’t spare any men—­there’s a horde of them devils!”

He was leaping for his horse with the last words, and in an instant he had joined the other riders who had paused, tentatively, near the edge of the porch, having seen him.  They fled, a dark mass against the dull shadows of the valley, sweeping up the big slope toward the plains.

Blackburn, the range boss, was leading, with Shorty riding close beside him.  In the dim distance they could see the herd, spreading wide over the level, running fast in the dust cloud that still followed them.

The Circle L men had not ridden more than a mile after striking the level when Blackburn saw some blots detach themselves from the larger blot—­a number of them, like stray wisps of clouds straggling behind a storm.

“They’re droppin’ back to pot-shot us,” Blackburn said to Shorty.  He yelled at the men behind, warning them, and the group split up, spreading out, though not reducing the breakneck speed at which they had been riding.

They had not gone far after Blackburn shouted his warning when a puff of white smoke dotted the luminous haze ahead, and a bullet whined close to Blackburn.