Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/286

 Rutherford answered. "I 'll send one of the boys over to boss the round-up. He 'll know the ground better than you lads. Make camp here to-night and he 'll join you before you start. To-morrow evening I 'll have a messenger meet you on the flats. We 're trying to keep in touch with each other, you understand."

Rutherford left them making camp. They were so far up in the mountains that the night was cool, even though the season was midsummer. Unused to sleeping outdoors as yet, Roy lay awake far into the night. His nerves were jumpy. The noises of the grazing horses and of the four-footed inhabitants of the night startled him more than once from a cat-nap. His thoughts were full of Beulah Rutherford. Was she alive or dead to-night, in peril or in safety?

At last, in the fag end of the night, he fell into sound sleep that was untroubled. From this he was wakened in the first dim dawn by the sound of his companions stirring. A fire was already blazing and breakfast in process of making. He rose and stretched his stiff limbs. Every bone seemed to ache from contact with the hard ground.

While they were eating breakfast, a man rode up and dismounted. A long, fresh zigzag scar