Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/89

 That night he held them in a box cañon, having first watered them at the stream below. The cattle were uneasy, suspicious of the towering cliffs above, and they were restless most of the night. He did not unsaddle, but stretched himself out near the mouth of the gorge, between two fires. He slept little, however.

At three o'clock in the morning he sat up suddenly, with an instinctive sense of something wrong. The herd had suddenly stopped grazing and was listening. The next moment he heard them stampede toward him, and he had no more than time to throw himself into the saddle when they were abreast of him.

Shouting and cursing, he tried to hold them in the bottle neck of the cañon, but they passed him, running like crazy things, into the open. Fortunately, once out in the broad valley, they quieted, stopped running and shortly fell to grazing again. But he could not trust them. He rode herd over them until daylight, alternately singing and whistling to quiet them, and without even the comfort of a cigarette, lest the lighted match start them off again. He did not relax his vigilance until at dawn they began quietly to graze. And at dawn he rode into the cañon to find what had caused the trouble.

He found the stripped carcass of a cow in the upper valley, and by the way the meat was cut from the bones he knew that Indians had been at work. Probably a hunting party which was looking for deer out of season, and failing had killed beef, after their easy fashion. Such thieving was common enough, and angry as he was he would probably have accepted the situation and gone on, had not a movement along the side of the cañon, a fluttering of the scrub which grew out of its steep sides, caught his eye.

Sitting on his horse, the cattle quietly grazing outside, he watched it. It was something in motion, something slowly climbing to the top. But it was so skillful, took such advantage of projecting rocks and scrub, that it was not until it reached the top and stood outlined against the sky that he knew it for what it was, the thief himself, carrying his booty in a sack.