"I'll do it!" cried the judge, taking the bait like a fish, "I'll do it at once! I want your best horse, Jeff, and a guide. I'll wire the chief forester from Bender!"
"Keno!" said Creede sententiously, "and give my regards to Teddy."
As the old judge disappeared over the western rim the next morning the _rodéo_ boss smiled grimly behind his hand, and glanced significantly at Hardy. Then, with the outfit behind him, he rode slowly up the cañon, leaving his partner to his steady job as "family man"--entertaining the boss.
For two days the sheepmen watched the river eagerly, waiting for a drop; then suddenly, as the snow water ran by and a cool day checked the distant streams, it fell, and the swift pageant of the crossing began. At sun-up a boss herder rode boldly out into the current and swam it with his horse; brawny Mexicans leapt into the thicket of _palo verdes_ that grew against the cliff and cut branches to build a chute; Jasper Swope in his high sombrero and mounted on his black mule galloped down from the hidden camp and urged his men along. Still the same ominous silence hung about the shore where Juan Alvarez lay buried beneath the cross. There was no watcher on Lookout Point, no horsemen lurking in the distance; only the lowing of the day herd, far up the cañon, and the lapping of muddy waters. Across the river the low _malpai_ cliffs rose up like ramparts against them and Black Butte frowned down upon them like a watch tower, but of the men who might be there watching there was no sign.
The sheepman studied upon the situation for a while; then he sent a messenger flying back to camp and soon a hardy band of wethers came down, led by an advance guard of goats, and their plaintive bleating echoed in a confused chorus from the high cliffs as they entered the wings of the chute. Already the camp rustlers had driven them out on the slanting rock and encircled the first cut with their canvas wagon cover, when Jasper Swope held up his hand for them to stop. At the last moment and for no cause he hesitated, touched by some premonition, or suspicious of the silent shore. One after another the herders clambered back and squatted idly against the cool cliff, smoking and dangling their polished carbines; the sheep, left standing upon the rock, huddled together and stood motionless; the goats leapt nimbly up on adjacent bowlders and gazed across the river intently; then, throwing up his hand again, the sheepman spurred his black mule recklessly into the water, waving his big hat as he motioned for the sheep to cross.