lost the price of a small herd; Gilbert of the “Lost Range,” whose brand was a circle within a circle; Stetson of the “XI,” a short heavy-set man, with an immovable pugilist’s face, to-night, as usual, ahead of the game; Thompson, one-armed but formidable, who drove the stage and kept the postoffice and inadequate general store just across to the north of the saloon; McFadden, a wiry little Scotchman with sandy whiskers, Rankin’s nearest neighbor to the south; a half-dozen lesser lights, in distinction from the big ranchers called by their first names, “Buck” or “Pete” or “Bill” as the case might be, mere cowmen employed at a salary.  Elbow to elbow they leaned upon the supporting bar, awaiting with interest the something they knew Kennedy had to say.

Kennedy did not ask a single man what he would have.  It was needless.  Silently he placed a glass before each, and starting a bottle of red liquor at one end of the line, he watched it, as, steadily emptying, it passed on down to the end.

“I never use it, you know,” he explained, as, the preparation complete, they looked at him expectantly.

“Take something else, then,” pressed McFadden.

Mick poured out a glass of water and set it on the bar before him; but not an observer smiled.  They knew the man they were dealing with.

“All right, boys,”—­McFadden’s glass went up on a level with his eye, and one and all the others followed the motion,—­“all right, boys!  Here’s to you, Kennedy!”—­mouthing the last word as though it were a hot pebble, and in unison the dozen odd hands led the way to their respective owners’ mouths.  There was a momentary pause; then a musical clinking, as the empty glasses returned to the board.  Silence, expectant silence, returned.

“Boys,”—­Mick looked from face to face intimately,—­“we’ve got work ahead.  Hoyt here reported this morning that two of the best horses on the Big B were missing.  He’s made a forty-mile circuit to-day, and no one has seen anything of them.  You all know what that means.”

Stetson turned to the foreman.  “What time did you see them last, Hoyt?”

“About nine last evening.”

“Sure?”

Bob’s long head nodded emphatically.  “Yes, one of the boys had the team out mending fence in the afternoon, and when he was through he turned them into the corral with the broncos.  I’m sure they were there.”

“I’m not surprised,” commented Thompson, swinging on his single elbow to face the others.  “It’s been some time now since we’ve had a necktie party and it’s bound to come.  The wonder is it hasn’t come before.”

Gilbert and Grover, comparatively elderly men, said nothing, looked nothing; but upon the faces of the half-dozen cowboys there appeared distinct anticipation.  The hunt of a “rustler” appealed to them as a circus does to a small boy, as the prospect of a football game does to a college student.

Meanwhile, McFadden had been thinking.  One could always tell when this process was taking place with the Scotchman, from his habit of tapping his chest with his middle finger as though beating time to the movement of his mental machinery.