What were the feelings of Mr. Mike Stelton that dawn had better be imagined than described. The first he knew of any calamity was when Mrs. Bissell, unable to find her husband near the house, shook him frantically by the shoulder.

“Get up, Mike,” she cried into his ear. “Somethin’s wrong here. Henry’s nowhere around.”

Dazed with sleep, unable to get the proper focus on events, the foreman blundered stupidly about the place searching cursorily, and cursing the helplessness of Beef Bissell.

Presently he got awake, however, and perceived that dawn was coming up in the east. Then he reveled in the delightful anticipation of what was to occur out under the old cottonwood along the river bank. Mentally he licked his chops at the prospect of this rare treat. He intended if possible to make Juliet witness her lover’s degradation.

After vainly hunting some valid excuse for Bissell’s 191 untimely departure, Stelton thought he would call the boys, which he did. Then he turned his attention to the bunk-house, for he knew the cowmen were in a hurry to get away and would want to be called early.

“All out!” he bawled jovially, thrusting his head in at the door.

Not a sound came in response. Then for the first time Stelton had a premonition of trouble. He walked into the bunk-house and took quick note of the ten tumbled but empty bunks. Also of the ten belts and revolvers that hung on wooden pegs along the wall—the sign of Western etiquette.

In those days, and earlier, if a man rode by at meal-time or evening he was your guest. He might take dinner with his hat on, and get his knife and fork mixed, but if he hung up his belt and revolver he was satisfied that all the amenities had been observed, whether you thought so or not.

The one other unspoken law was that every man’s business was his own business and no questions were allowed. You might be entertaining a real bad man like Billy the Kid, and you might suspect his identity, but you never made inquiries, and for three reasons. 192

The first was, that it was bad plains etiquette; the second, that if you were mistaken and accused the wrong man, punishment was sure and swift; and the third was, that if you were right the punishment was still surer and swifter, for an escaping criminal never left any but mute witnesses behind him.

Looking at these ten indications of good-will along the bunk-house wall, Stelton’s alarm was once more lulled. Perhaps the men had all gone for a paddle in the stream before breakfast, he thought. If so, they would take care of themselves, and turn up when the big bell rang. He couldn’t waste any more time this way.

Now to relieve the man who was guarding Larkin outside the window.

He hurried around the house and came upon the prone figure of a cow-puncher, rolled close against the house. The man’s head was bloody, his hands were tied behind him, and his neckerchief had been stuffed into his mouth and held there by another. He was half-dead when Stelton, with a cry of surprise, bent over him and loosened his bonds.

With a prolonged yell the foreman brought all hands running to him and, giving the hurt man 193 into the care of a couple of them, ran along the house to Bud’s window. The bent bars showed how the bird had flown. Stelton was about to give way to his fury when another cry from the rear of the cook-house told of the discovery of the second watchman’s body, that had lain hidden in the long grass which grew up against the walls.

Then didn’t Stelton curse! Never had he been so moved to profane eloquence, and never did he give such rein to it. He cursed everything in sight, beginning with the ranch house; and he took that from chimney to cellar, up and down every line and angle, around the corners and out to the barn. Then he began on the barn and wound up with the corral. The cowboys listened in admiration and delight, interjecting words of approval now and then.

But once having delivered himself of this relief, the foreman’s face set into its customary ugly scowl, and he snapped out orders to saddle the horses. Presently a man rode up from the river bottoms and told of the discovery of many hoof tracks there, and the place where they had waited a long while.

“I’ve got it!” bawled Stelton, pounding his 194 thigh. “Larkin’s men have been here and carried off all the owners. Oh, won’t there be the deuce to pay?”

Then he picked out the cowboys who had come with their bosses and added:

“Crowd yore grub and ride home like blazes. Get yore punchers an’ bring grub for a week. Then we’ll all meet at the junction of the Big Horn and Gooseberry Creek. If yuh punchers like a good job you’ll get yore owners out o’ this. And I’m plumb shore when we get through there won’t be a sheepman left in this part of the State. To-morrer night at Gooseberry!”

Then was such a scene of hurry and bustle and excitement as the Bar T had seldom witnessed. The parting injunctions were to bring extra horses and plenty of rope, with the accent on the rope, and a significant look thrown in.

By seven o’clock, the time that Larkin, bloody, humiliated and suffering, would already have paid his penalty, there was scarcely a soul at the Bar T ranch, for the cowboys had disappeared across the plains at a hard trot.

The Bar T punchers were sent out on the range to scour for tracks of the fugitives, but, after following them some distance from the river bottom, gave up in despair when a night herder admitted 195 that the Bar T horses had been feeding in the vicinity the night before, thus entangling the tracks. Meantime the cook was preparing food for the punchers to carry, guns were being oiled and overhauled, knives sharpened, and ropes carefully examined.

Yet as the men went about their duties there was a kind of dazed, subdued air in all they did, for it was, indeed, hard to realize that the ranch owners of nearly a quarter of Wyoming’s best range had disappeared into the empty air apparently without a sound or protest.

The following afternoon the entire Bar T outfit, excepting a couple of punchers who were incapacitated from former round-up injuries, swept out of the yard and headed almost directly east across the plain.

Julie and her mother watched them go and waved them farewell, the former with a clutch of fear at her heart for her lover and the latter in tears for her husband, thus unconsciously taking opposite sides in the struggle that they knew must ensue.

It must not be thought that Juliet had turned against her father since their final difference. After her first outbreak against his narrow views and unjust treatment of Larkin, the old love that 196 had been paramount all her life returned, and with it a kind of pity. She knew that in a man of her father’s age his nature could not be made over immediately, if ever; the habits of a rough lifetime were too firmly ingrained. But at the same time there was something gone from the sweet and intimate affection that had formerly characterized their relations.

Lovers or married folk who declare for the efficacy of a quarrel as a renewer of love are wrong in the last analysis. Loss of control always entails loss of respect, and fervent “making up” after such an outbreak cannot efface the picture of anger-distorted features or remove the acid of bitter words. Thus it was with Juliet and her love for her father.

As to his safety she was not worried, for she knew that Bud would not allow any harm to come to him as he was in command of the men who had effected the taking-off. What Larkin’s plans were she did not fully realize, but she knew this sudden coup had been executed to further his own ends in the imperative matter of getting his sheep north. And of this she finally convinced her mother, although that lady wept copiously before the thing was accomplished.

The evening following the departure of Mike 197 Stelton and his punchers was made notable by the arrival of a man on horseback, who carried across his saddle a black box, and in thongs at his side a three-legged standard of yellow wood. His remaining equipment was a square of black cloth.

Without invitation he turned his dejected animal into the Bar T corral and made himself at home for the evening. At the supper table he revealed his identity and explained his purpose.

“I’m Ed Skidmore,” he announced, “and I take photographs. This thing I’ve got is a camera.” He had already mounted the instrument on his tripod. “I’ve been going around from ranch to ranch and the pictures have been selling like hot cakes.”

Juliet, listening, noted that his conversation was that of a comparatively well-educated man and that he had none of the characteristic drawl or accent of the plainsmen. To her a camera was nothing out of the ordinary, although she had not seen one since her final return West, but her mother was vastly interested.

In those days photography was not a matter of universal luxury as it is now, and the enterprising Skidmore was practically the first to introduce it as a money-maker in the widely scattered ranches of the cow country. 198

“How do yuh sell ’em?” asked Martha Bissell, fluttering with the possibilities of the next morning, the time the young man had set for his operation. Martha had not been “took” since that far-off trip “East” to St. Paul, when she and Henry had posed for daguerreotypes.

“Five dollars apiece, ma’am,” said Skidmore, “and they’re cheap at the price.” And they were, since the cost of something universally desired is dependent on the supply rather than the demand.

After supper Martha retired to her bedroom to overhaul her stock of “swell” dresses, a stock that had not been disturbed in fifteen years except for the spring cleaning and airing. This left Skidmore and Juliet alone. She civilly invited him out on the veranda, seeing he was a man of some quality.

“I had a queer experience to-day,” he remarked after a few commonplaces. “I was riding to the Bar T from the Circle-Arrow and was about twenty miles away, rounding a butte, when a man rode out to me from some place of concealment.

“When he reached me he suddenly pulled his gun and covered me.

“‘Where are you goin’?’ he said. I told him I was on my way here and why. He examined 199 my outfit suspiciously and let me go. But first he said:

“‘Take this letter to the Bar T and give it to Miss Bissell.’” Skidmore reached inside his shirt and pulled forth a square envelope, which he handed to Juliet. “The whole thing was so strange,” the photographer went on, “that I have waited until I could see you alone so that I could tell you about it.”

Juliet, surprised and startled, turned the missive over in her hands, hopeful that it was a letter from Bud and yet fearful of something that she could not explain. When Skidmore had finished she excused herself and went into her room, closing the door behind her.

On the envelope was the simple inscription, “Miss Bissell,” written in a crabbed, angular hand. This satisfied her that the message was not from Bud, and with trembling fingers she opened it. Inside was an oblong sheet of paper filled with the same narrow handwriting. Going to the window to catch the dying light, she read:

Miss:

This is to tell yuh that Mr. Larkin who yuh love is already merried. It ain’t none of my biznis, but I want yuh to no 200 it. An’ that ain’t all. The U. s. oficers are looking for him on another charge, tu. Nobody noes this but me an’ yuh, an’ nobody will as long as the monie keeps comin’ in. If yuh doant bileeve this, axe him.