Early the next morning Scott called up Dawson to find out what his orders would be in regard to the recount. He was itching to serve notice on those herders.

“Good-morning, Mr. Dawson. Did Mr. Ramsey tell you of my report on the number of sheep that are on this district?”

“Yes, he ’phoned me last night. I heard it rumored around among the boys yesterday afternoon and mentioned it to him. How many extras do you think there are?”

“About four thousand altogether.”

“How did you count them?”

“Of course I did not count them, but I am sure that the estimate is not far off. Every band will run at least five hundred over.”

“Well, if you are sure of that notify those herders to have their bands back at the chute for a recount next.... What day is this?”

“Friday, I think,” it was pretty hard for any one to keep track of the days of the week out there in the forest.

“Friday, then tell them to be ready for the recount Monday.”

“Not before Monday?” Scott objected with disappointment.

“No, they will have to have that long to get their bands back to the chute and I advise you to check your estimates pretty carefully before you order them back. They will raise some row if you make a mistake. Heth can help you with it.”

“I have not seen Heth since I started for that fire day before yesterday,” Scott was glad of a chance to report this for he felt that he was getting very little assistance out of Heth and he wanted Dawson to know it.

“Must have gone to town with the checkings,” was the unsatisfactory reply.

“Well, I guess I can handle this alone,” Scott said, “I am mad enough to do almost anything.”

“Go to it then, but be careful not to get yourself into a hole.”

It was the most satisfactory conference that Scott had ever had with the ranger and he began to think that Baxter’s estimate of him might be right after all. He was going to have the satisfaction of ordering those herders back to the chute and he was not sure that he would have let Heth help him if he had been there. He hurried out to saddle Jed and get started on such pleasant duty. Jed seemed quite as anxious to be off as his master. He came up to the gate at Scott’s whistle and they were soon skimming away over the old ridge trail on their joyful errand.

Scott rode straight to the place where he had seen the nearest band the day before. They were nowhere to be seen even when he climbed onto a knoll which gave him a quite extensive view. He was not an expert on sheep, but he had heard from the herders themselves the day before that the sheep had been on very slim rations in the lowlands before they came onto the forest and were now so eager for the fresh spring grass that they were hard to move. There was plenty of grass here and he could not think why they had been moved, or where they could have gone.

But the trail of two thousand sheep is not very hard to find and Scott was soon trotting rapidly along their dusty track. An experienced man would have known from the barrenness of the ground, from which almost all the grass had been eaten or trampled out, that the sheep were bunched and were being driven somewhere rapidly. Scott could not tell this from the trail, but he soon overtook them and found both herder and dog busily engaged in driving the sheep as rapidly as possible down the slope toward the valley cliffs.

It was hard to guess the number when they were bunched that way, but Scott sized them up as best he could and was still convinced that there were too many.

“How many sheep did you say you had in that band?” Scott asked riding up to the herder.

“Fourteen hundred,” said the herder.

“They must have swollen since you counted them,” Scott replied sarcastically.

“I didn’t count ’em,” said the herder. “Your man did the countin’.”

“I don’t think much of the job, whoever did it,” Scott retorted. “You have those sheep up at the chute Monday morning and I’ll count them myself.”

“What, drive these sheep clear back there to that chute just to have them counted again?” the herder screamed.

“Those are the official orders,” Scott replied with dignity.

“What are you goin’ to do, count them every week? If I run all the fat off these sheep for nothing I’ll make it warm for you.”

“You won’t do it for nothing. It will be a good thing for you. You won’t have as many to bother with when you get back.”

He left the man cursing and screaming, and rode on. There was intense satisfaction in showing these fellows that he was on to them.

The chase after the second band had brought him so far down toward the valley cliffs that he decided to have a look at the little ca?ons where the extra sheep had come in before he notified the other herders of the recount. He was still gloating over his little interview with the first herder when he came to the cliffs. He had never seen the ca?ons but he knew their location from his map and had soon found the one farthest east. He rode clear around the rim of it. There was not a single hoof print. The upper portion of it was rather broad and shallow, but when he went down into it he soon found that it ended in an almost perpendicular drop to the valley below.

“Not much chance there,” Scott thought as he mounted Jed and started in search of the next ca?on. The second ca?on was very much like the first. It was a little larger at the top but ended in the same precipitous drop.

Before he reached the third ca?on a new idea occurred to him. Perhaps it would be just as well not to leave any tracks around these ca?ons. He did not know just why but he had a hunch that he did not want the herders to know that he had been to those other ca?ons.

He began to suspect that the report was a joke to make him investigate all those impossible ca?ons.

“I’ve got to look at every one of them now,” Scott fumed, “just to make sure that it was not a fake, but I’ll see that nobody knows that I have done it.” He rode doggedly on to the next ca?on, but he dismounted at some distance from it and took care to cover up his tracks wherever he went. And so he inspected every one of those little ca?ons along that five miles of valley cliffs, and everywhere he found the same thing. Not a sign of a sheep trail anywhere and the same steep drop at the bottom.

“Self-respecting squirrel would not try to climb any of them,” Scott muttered disgustedly as he finished the inspection. “Well, they worked their joke all right but they’ll never have the satisfaction of knowing it,” and he carefully covered up the last sign of his visit.

“Now to notify those other greasers,” Scott exulted as he rode back toward the grazing grounds.

All of a sudden he straightened up with a jerk. He had found out that the entrance of the sheep through the valley ca?ons was a fake, but if they did not come in there, where under the sun did they come from? He had forgotten all about that in his anxiety to get away from those ca?ons. There was only one way to find it out now and that was to ride around the boundary of his whole district.

He hurried off to find the other herders for it was a long way around the boundaries and he would have to ride hard if he was to make it before dark. Well, he had the horse to do it. He patted Jed’s arching neck affectionately and the big black fellow pricked up his ears in answer.

When he started on his search for the sheep it took him longer than he expected to find the ot............