"I wish there was a shorter cut to get home," said the girl wearily. "I'm just about tired. Climbing mountains is a little out of my line. I wonder how long it will take to get used to it."

"There is a shorter way, Miss Hathaway," said one of the breed boys. "It's through that sheep-ranch there. We always used to go that way before they fenced it in, but there's gates to it if we can find 'em."

"Let's go through that way, then, if it's shorter. Of course it is shorter—I can see that, and we'll trust to luck to be able to see the gates. I suppose they're wire gates."

"Yes, just regular wire gates, an' it's gettin' dark pretty blame fast, but mebbe we can find 'em all right."

So they followed the fence, searching in the dim light for the almost invisible gate—the girl who had that day appointed herself commanding officer and her three brave scouts.

Alongside the wire fence they followed a narrow cow-trail for nearly a quarter of a mile, then the path disappeared inside the field, and the side-hills along which they were obliged to travel were rough and dangerous. It was late, and darkness settled down around them, cutting from their vision everything but a small line of fence and the nearby hills.

They made slow headway over the rocky banks. Hope, tired with the day's exploring and hungry after her long ride and the somewhat slender diet of the past week, was sorry they had not gone the road, which, though longer, would not have taken such a length of time to travel. The boys were good scouts, yet it became evident that they had never followed the new line of fence before. Their horses slipped upon the sides of steep inclines which became more rocky and dangerous as they proceeded. Darkness increased rapidly. One horse in the rear fell down, but the rider was upon his feet in an instant; then they dismounted and led their horses, traveling along very slowly in Indian file. Some time later they found the wire gate, much to the girl's relief. It was then quite dark. The moon had risen, but showed itself fitfully behind black, stormy looking clouds. Without difficulty they discovered a trail leading somewhere, and followed it until they rounded a point from which they could see the light in the sheep-man's house.

"Why, we're almost up to his house!" exclaimed Hope. "This isn't the way. We don't want to go there!"

"I reckon we'll have to get pretty close up to it to find the road that goes to the other gate," said the soft-voiced twin.

"How foolish we've been," sighed the girl.

"Yep, a pack o' idiots," agreed Dave.

"But it's too dark for anyone to see us—or notice us," she said with relief. "I think we might go right up to the house and look through the windows without anyone seeing us."

"Let's do it," suggested Dave.

"Well I should say not!" exclaimed the girl. "It's the last thing on earth I would do—peek into anyone's window! I am not so curious to see the interior of his house—or anyone's else."

"I'll bet they're just eatin' supper," said Ned hungrily.

"All the better," replied Hope; "there will be no one around to see us then. I wonder how much closer we'll have to go?"

"Not much further," answered the soft-voiced twin wisely. "See, there's the barns, an' the road ain't a great ways off." He led the way, while Hope and the boy, Dave, followed close, and the youngest boy trailed along somewhere in the rear. They passed between the stables and the house, then, aided by the fitful moon, found the road, along which they made better time.

Hope felt a great relief as they began to leave the house in the distance, though why, she could scarcely have explained. She said to herself that she was in a hurry to reach home, but as they neared the huge, flat-roofed sheep-sheds she slowed up her horse, which had gone on ahead of the others, and glanced back at her approaching scouts. The twins came up with her, then she stopped and looked behind.

"Where's Ned?" she asked sharply, a sudden suspicion entering her head. "What's keeping him?"

"He went up to the house to see what's goin' on," replied Dave. "I saw him start for that way."

"How dared he do it! He will be seen and then what will they think! We will wait for him here." Then angrily to the boy: "If you knew he was going to do that Indian trick why didn't you stop him?"

"I didn't know nothin' till I missed him," replied the boy.

"No, we didn't know he was goin', but when we saw he was gone for sure it wouldn't 'a' done no good to 'a' gone after him. Anyway, we wouldn't 'a' left you alone!" The soft-voiced twin was a genius at finding explanations. He was never at a loss.

The girl recovered her temper instantly. "You did quite right, my brave scout," she cried. "I see you have learned the first and greatest principle of your vocation. Never desert a lady, no matter what danger she may be in. But what a temptation it must have been to you to follow him and bring him back to me!" There is no doubt but that the sarcasm was wasted upon the breed boys, who waited stolidly with her near some sheltering brush for the truant Ned, whose mischievousness had led him off the trail.

At last he rode up with them, surprised out of breath to find them there waiting for him. The girl took him by the sleeve. "You're a bad boy. Next time ask me when you have an inclination to do anything like that. Now give an account of yourself. What did you see?"

"I just wanted to see what they had to eat, so I peeked in," apologized the youngster. "There was two men eatin' their supper. The boss wasn't there. I heard old Morris tell another fellow that he was out helpin' put in the sheep."

"But here are the sheds, and surely there are no sheep here," she exclaimed anxiously.

"They're keepin' 'em in the open corrals down the road a piece," explained the soft-voiced twin. "They don't keep no sheep here in the sheds now."

The commanding officer breathed easier. "That's good; come on then," she said, riding ahead. They had not proceeded fifty yards when the low tones of men's voices reached them. Simultaneously they stopped their horses and listened, but nothing save an indistinct murmur could be heard. One of the twins slipped from his horse and handed the bridle reins to the girl, then crept forward. In the darkness she could not tell which one it was, nor did she care. She was filled with excitement and the longing for adventure which the time and place aggravated. Had they not that day formed a band of secrecy—she and her three brave scouts? It occurred to her that it might be the sheep-man returning with a herder, but if so he had no right to stand at such a distance and talk in guarded tones. The very atmosphere of the place felt suspicious. They drew their horses to one side of the roadway, waiting in absolute silence for the return of the scout. The voices reached them occasionally from the opposite side of a clump of brush not a stone's throw away.

They waited several minutes, which seemed interminable, then a dark form appeared and a voice whispered softly: "Somethin's up! Let's get the horses over by the fence so's they can't hear us." The twin led the way, taking a wide circuit about the spot from where the sound of voices came. They reached the fence quickly without noise, securing their horses behind a screen of scrubby willows.

"Now, go on," said the girl. "What did you hear?"

"When I crawled up close I saw two men. One of 'em said, 'Shut up. You're makin' too much noise! Do you want 'em to hear you up to the house?' The other said he didn't give a damn, that they might just as well make a good job of it an' kill off Livingston while they were getting rid of his sheep. These two fellers have just come over to guard the road from the house to keep the men there from interferin', but the mob's down there at the corral waitin' to do the work. I found that much out an' then I sneaked back. I reckon they're goin' to drive the sheep over the cut-bank."

"The devils!" cried Hope, under her breath. "They're going to pile up the sheep and kill him if he interferes, are they? We'll show them!"

"We can't do anything," said the boy. "There's more'n a dozen men out there at the corrals, an' it's darker'n pitch."

"So we'll just have to stand here and see that crime committed!" she burst out. "No, not on your life! You boys have got to stand by me. Surely you're just as brave as a girl? We're going over there where we can see what's going on, and the first man that tries to drive a sheep out of that corral gets one of these!" She patted the barrel of her rifle as she pulled it from its saddle case. "Get your guns and come along." But they were not far behind her in getting their weapons. The older boys had revolvers, and little Ned was armed with a Winchester repeating shotgun.

The twins were never seen without their guns, and had the reputation of sleeping with them at night. For wildness those two boys were the terror of the country. Their hearts sang a heathenish song of joy at this new adventure. Surely they were as brave as a girl! Her taunt rankled some. They would show her that they were not cowards! She had begun to worry already!

"Oh, what if it should be too late! What if we should be too late! Oh, it can't be! Let's go faster!" she cried.

The breed boys crept along close to the ground, making altogether much less noise than the girl, who seemed to think that speed and action were all that was necessary.

"Sh! Keep quieter. You musn't let them know anyone's 'round. Those fellers by the road 're just over there, an' they'll hear us," whispered Dan.

Then slower, more stealthily, they crept around the two men who guarded the road, and with less caution approached the corrals, the girl meanwhile recovering her composure to a great degree, though her heart still beat wildly. The night seemed a trifle lighter now to her straining eyes. What if the moon should come out, revealing them to the men waiting beyond the corrals? She grasped her rifle firmly, and her heart beat quicker at the thought. The soft-voiced twin must have felt the same fear, for he came close and whispered in her ear: "The corrals ain't more'n a rod, right over there. We'd better make a run for that bush there on this side of it, for the moon's comin' out—see!" He pointed upward. A rift had come in the black cloud from which the moon shone dimly, growing momentarily brighter. Before them the corral loomed up like a great flat patch of darkness, and to one side of this dark patch something taller stood in dim relief—a small clump of brush, toward which the odd little scouting party ran in all haste. Safe within its shelter, a fierce joy, savage in its intensity, filled the girl.

"Come on, Moon, come on in all your glory!" she whispered; then, as if in answer to her command, it came in full splendor from behind its veil of black. It might have been a signal. Back in the hills a coyote called weirdly to its mate, but before the last wailing note had died away a sharp report sounded on the still air, followed by the groans of a man in mortal agony. Hope, upon her knees in the brush, clasped her hands to her throat to stifle a cry.

"Now drive his damn'd sheep into the gulch!" commanded a gruff voice.

Following the pain, a fierce light came into the girl's eyes. Over tightly closed teeth her lips parted dryly. Instinctively the breed boys crept behind her, leaving her upon one knee before the heap of brush. A man leaped into the corral among the stupid sheep, and as he leaped a bullet passed through his hand.

"God, I'm killed!" he cried, as he sank limply out of sight among the sheep. For a few moments not a sound came except the occasional bleating of a lamb, then the gate of the corral, which was ajar, opened as by some invisible hand, and the great body of animals crowded slowly toward the entrance.

"They think there's only one man here, and they're not going to be bluffed by one," whispered Hope. "See, they must be coaxing the leaders with hay, and there's something going on back there that will make them stampede in a moment, and then the cut-bank! But we'll bluff them; make them think there's a whole regiment here. There's four of us. Now get your guns ready. Good; now when I start, all of you shoot at once as fast as you can load. Aim high in that direction. Shoot in the air, not anywhere else. Now do as I tell you. Now, all together!" For two or three minutes those four guns made music. The hills gathered up the noise and flung it back, making the air ring with a deafening sound. "Shoot up! Shoot higher, or you'll be hitting someone," she admonished, as dark forms began to rise from the ground beyond the corral and run away.

"They're crawling away like whipped dogs," exclaimed a twin in glee. "I'd like to shoot one for luck!"

"Shame on you," cried the girl softly. "That would be downright murder while they're running."

"I reckon there's been murder already to-night," said the soft-voiced twin. Hope turned upon him fiercely: "That wasn't murder! I shot him through the hand. Murder? Do you call it murder to kill one of those beasts? You mean—you mean that they killed him! I forgot for a minute! Oh, it couldn't be that they killed him—Mr. Livingston! Are you sure he wasn't up at the house, Ned? I must find out." She started toward the corral. Dave pulled her back roughly.

"See there! Those fellers that was on guard down there 're comin' back. They must have left their horses down by that rock. They'll ketch us sure!" She drew back into the brush again, waiting until the two men, whose voices first brought suspicion to their minds, had passed by, skirting the corral in diplomatic manner.

Hope, who had been so eager to search the scene of bloodshed, crept from the brush and took the opposite direction, followed closely by the breed boys. When they reached their horses she spoke:

"Now you boys go home. Go in from the back coulee and sneak into bed. Don't let anyone see you, whatever you do, for if this was ever found out——" She waited for their imaginations to finish the sentence.

"We can sneak in all right," exclaimed Dave. "We know how to do that! They'll never find it out in ten years!"

"Then go at once. Ride fast by the Spring coulee and get there ahead of the men—if there should be any that belong there. I will come later. If they ask, say that I'm in bed, or taking a walk, or anything that comes into your head. But you won't be questioned. You mustn't be! Now hurry up!"

"But why won't you come along with us?" asked Dave.

"Because if we should be caught together they would know who did the shooting. If they see you alone they will not suspect you, and if they see me alone they will never think of such a thing. It is the wisest way, besides I have other reasons. Now don't stand there all night talking to me, but go, unless you want to make trouble." She watched them until they were lost to sight, then mounted her horse and rode back over the road that she had come, straight up to the sheep-man's house.