Of course the two saddle boys hovered around, wishing to learn any news in connection with what had occurred in the valley during the preceding day, while the great herd was being driven over the ridge.
Under the skillful questioning of the stockman the cowboys told their story. All through the long day they had kept watch and ward over the bunk-house. Several times the rustlers who were being held prisoners there made a show of rushing out; but they really lacked the nerve to take their lives in their hands. And so evening still found the situation unchanged.
When it was dark the two cowboys had fired a few shots to let the rustlers understand they were still on deck. Then they had decamped, and, finding the exit, managed, after great difficulties, to climb out over the masses of piled-up rock, which had been torn loose by the explosion of dynamite.
They had spent the balance of the night in hiding, and when morning came made a “bee-line” for the place where they had been informed their horses would be waiting. After that it was no great effort to discover the presence of the herd off on the plain, and make direct for the cattle.
“Then you saw nothing of the rustlers after you left?” asked the stockman.
“We think we saw a bunch of riders far away to the south, an hour back,” one of the cowboys answered; “and hitting it up for all they were worth. If so be the rustlers had a saddle band outside the valley somewhere, then that must ’a been the crowd we saw. No danger of them comin’ back again.”
“Well, on the whole, it’s just as well,” remarked Colonel Haywood; “though there are those who have suffered at the hands of Mendoza in the past who would much rather see him a prisoner, and sent to the penitentiary for a long term.”
“I reckon he’d never get thar,” remarked Bart, with a smile and a nod, that Bob, though a greenhorn, could easily interpret to mean that the cow men knew of a better way to settle the rustler so he could never again raid their herds.
“It promises to be a bully day for the round-up, Frank!” remarked Bob, just forty-eight hours after the morning that saw them near the foot of the Thunder Mountain Ridge, and driving the recovered herd homeward, after rescuing it from the cattle rustlers of the dreaded Mendoza.