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 bunch of cattle along at a lively trot. He hailed them in his good sea voice as he drew in after them, his horse sliding down the shale of the hillside in a cloud of dust.

The man who had rounded the straying beast back to the herd was the nearer of the two. As he turned, drawing sudden rein at the challenge, startled in every line of his pose, Barrett's identification of him was complete. It was the long-nosed man from the Indian Nation who claimed to be blood relation to the wolf.

If ever a man looked the justification of such a contention, this cattle-thief looked it then. He threw a shot across the sailor's bows, so close to him it nicked the steel pommel of his saddle. Quicker than the eye could mark his movements the fellow acted, and almost as quickly threw himself over the saddle, hanging to his horse Indian fashion, its body hiding all of him but one hand on the saddle horn, one foot hooked by its spur in the cantle.

Barrett threw up his rifle for a crack at the horse, hoping to pin the scoundrel down like a bug under a stone. The hammer clicked; the lever ejected nothing at Barrett's impatient jerk. The magazine was empty.

Cooled by this discovery to a sudden realization of his danger, Barrett drew up his headlong chase after the thief, who rode the farther side of his horse with as much facility as he sat the saddle. The cattle-thief threw another shot across his saddle; it struck Barrett's stirrup, making his horse wince and jump with a start that almost unseated him.

The other thief, who had ridden madly off at the first sight of this unknown challenger, evidently in the