far. Around him on the prairie, grazing and lying about as if it belonged to them, were the Texas cattle, scattered far and wide.
He had stampeded them, beyond any doubt. But he had stampeded them in the wrong direction!
The humor of the situation struck him first. He leaned back in his saddle and almost laughed. They had sent him to stampede the herd, with directions that he stampede it toward Texas. He wondered how many of them ever had gone out on a dark night and stampeded a herd of eight or ten thousand half-wild cattle according to directions. The wonderful thing, as he saw it, was that he had set them off at all.
But those Kansas drovers would see neither the humor nor the marvel of it. That he understood very well. What they would say, what they would do, he could conjecture without a strain, for there was ruin standing in their very doors, delivered by his hand.
Still, his own conscience was easy. He had gone about the business honestly, and he had done as much as any man among them could have done, and more than any one of them would have attempted. He didn't owe any of them anything, and his duty lay straight ahead to report to Malcolm Duncan on the result of his night's work.
The situation was not without its satisfaction.
