“Pat, you and Doug ride along the west range and see how those cattle along Stony creek are faring. Walt can trail over north and see if everything is all right toward the Double O. I’ll take Evans and ride down to Wolf coulee and see what happened there last night.”
They started for the corral, Slim and the range boss walking together.
“Your horse fit for a full day?” asked Haines.
“She’ll be all right,” smiled Slim as he thought of Lightning’s wonderful endurance. There was no need to tell anyone of the capabilities of his horse.
While the others had to rope their mounts to separate them from the milling string of horses in the corral, Slim only whistled once and Lightning responded instantly.
“My gosh!” exclaimed Pat Beals enviously. “You must have a circus horse. I can yell my head off and I can’t get any of my mounts to come near me.”
“Maybe they don’t like your voice,” suggested Walt Kelly, who had just finished a battle with a calico cayuse and was badly winded.
They swung into their saddles and started out on the day’s ride, Pat and Doug heading west to ride along the headwaters of Stony creek, Walt riding north toward the range of the Double O and Slim and the foreman backtracking along the trail to Dirty Water.
Joe Haines was openly admiring Lightning.
“Quite a horse,” he said. “Must be fast?”
“She can go places,” grinned Slim, but he did not encourage the conversation along that line.
“Have any trouble getting into the Creeping Shadows country?” asked the foreman.
“Rustling’s bad here and we’d heard that the gang doing most of the dirty work had plugged up every trail coming in and were getting ready for a final clean-up.”
“I haven’t been here long enough to find out what’s going on,” said Slim, which was partly true. “If rustling is bad, why not appeal to the peace officers?”
The foreman snorted. “The sheriff’s on the other side of the Three Soldiers and he’s either been bought off or is scared to death.”
Haines laughed bitterly. “Kovec’s nothing but a tool for the rustlers. It’s a wonder you ever got out here alive.”
“I left when the town was asleep,” grinned Slim.
“That town never sleeps. It’s bad from top to bottom and Hal Titzell is one of the worst of them. He rides all over the country but I never heard of him ever buying any stock to amount to anything and Maxie Denkman and Newt Bemis, who say they’re helping him, are nothing but hired gunmen.”