"We'll tell Snake and Yellin' Kid about it when they come back,"
decided Bud, as he and his cousins returned to camp when darkness
had completely fallen. For it was useless, after that, to search
for the perpetrator of the joke.

Or was it a joke?

That is what the boy ranchers asked themselves more than once.

Contrary to their half-formed expectations, the night passed
quietly. There was no disturbance among the cattle, and no
midnight visitors invaded the camp. But, for all this, the slumbers
of our heroes were not easy. Perhaps they had premonitions of
coming disaster.

For disaster came, with the return, early on the morning of the
next day, of Snake and Yellin' Kid.

"They're after you, Bud!" shouted the cowboy with the loud voice.
"They're after you!"

"Who?" asked Bud, as he and his cousins came out to meet the
cowboys.

"Rustlers!" was the grim answer. "There's a lot of your steers
missin' from that far herd! Rustlers, Bud! Rustlers!"