ing as pennons for his troop of mares.
With a gasped oath, Sam Hardy went for the carbine in his saddle boot. But with a choked cry the button rammed the shoulder of his mount into Sam's pony, spoiling any chance to fire.
"I—kick me if yuh wanta," said Rosebud Joe then, dropping his brown eyes before the foreman's glare. "He—he's too damn purty to kill. He's—"
"All right, kid," chuckled Sam ruefully after a moment. "I'd give six months pay to lay a rope on him, my own self. Only—he costs the ranch plenty. Didja see them three brood mares close up at his heels? The boss paid plenty for them."
With the spring of that year, 1898, wild tales had come from the Klondike. Gold. Bonanza Creek. Candle. Gold lying in the black sand just a few feet underground. And three riders from the V Up and V Down left to try their luck in the northland. Others were restive, thinking how long they'd have to draw forty a month to have a stake, when they could pick up a fortune in a single summer if they were lucky hunting gold.
That was the first and mildest of the misfortunes which came to the horse range that year. Without saying much of anything, the United States Government combed the Indian reservations for choice saddle stock—and the Indians quietly let themselves out the back doors of the reservation bound for replenishments.
Brushes with the redskin rustlers became frequent. Rosebud Joe, now turned eighteen, was given a rifle and made ride night guard same as his elders. And the elders now were too few in number.
There came a night when more than sixty fine Morgans were run off. Haskins, Hardy, and their two remaining seasoned men took the plain trail with Rosebud Joe trailing along.
The trail led southwest. It all happened so suddenly the button scarcely had a chance to know it was an ambush at all. From willows and jackpine came a sudden volley of black powder rifles—oldtime weapons, but deadly enough at eighty yard range.
With a choked scream Pete Yardley fell, and his horse galloped straight ahead into the group of redskin rustlers. Haskins, the ranchman, was badly hit in the thigh. Sam Hardy was cursing with a left foot from which a big toe was hanging with shreds of boot.
A waddy named Gleason, Poke for short, had his horse felled like an axed steer, with a .50-110 slug in his forehead. Poke wrenched a leg getting clear as the animal went down.
Rosebud Joe, making his horse lie down while he fired methodically at the moving branches—getting one whoop of pain to tell of a hit—was the only one unharmed.
The redskins fled with their stolen horses. The white men made a slow and painful way back to the ranch. Big Jim Haskins was suffering extreme agony, beads of sweat coming forth on his bronzed forehead.
"It's m' hip, boys," he said from between set teeth. "Get me a down mattress an' lay it in the spring wagon. I got to get me to Miles City an' have Doc Tindall set it in a cast. Busted hips are damn bad medicine."
He waited only until they buried Pete Yardley. Then Haskins got Poke Gleason to drive the spring wagon.
"I hate to leave yuh with a bum foot, Sam," Haskins told the foreman, holding out a hand. "But when yo're able,
