“But we’ll soon be in the mountains, and then it will be cooler,” asserted Horace.  “I want to overhaul the raiders before night.  Won’t father and the others feel small when they learn that we three, whom they left behind because we were too young, have rounded up Megget?”

“You don’t mean to say that you intend for us three to tackle the raiders alone?” exclaimed Tom.

“Why not?”

“Because we wouldn’t stand one chance in a thousand—­no, nor in ten thousand—­of being able to capture them.  We don’t know the trail at all, and they probably are familiar with every rock and turn in it.  If they should discover that we were pursuing them, all they would need do would be to lie in wait for us and capture us when we came along.”

The truth of what the younger of the chums said was so evident that even the impetuous Horace was forced to admit it.

“Then what shall we do?” he asked.  “If you have any better plan to suggest, out with it.”

Tom, however, could think of nothing feasible and was silent.

The boys had pulled their ponies down to a walk and for several minutes none of them spoke.

Of a sudden Blackhawk raised his head, sniffed the air and then uttered a low whinny.

The sound, coming so unexpectedly, scared the lads, and they looked at one another in alarm.

“He smells something,” exclaimed Horace in a whisper, as though fearing to speak out loud.

The boys were in the lowland between two crests of the rolling plains.

“Perhaps it’s the cattle.  They may be on the other side of that rise in the plains,” returned Larry.

Anxiously the three boys gazed toward the crest.  The thought that they might be close upon the very men they were chasing startled them, and they were at a loss as to the best thing to do.

“If it is the raiders and the cattle Blackhawk scented, then they’ll be on the lookout for us,” murmured Tom.  “They could hear that whinny for——­”

“By jove! it is they,” cried Larry excitedly.  “See those horses’ ears bobbing?” And he pointed to the south.

Following his finger, his companions beheld two sharp points steadily advancing from the farther side of the crest.

“Be ready to give it to ’em,” breathed Horace, at the same time unslinging his rifle.

But before he could get it to his shoulder the head of the horse came into view and the next instant the head and shoulders of a man.

In a flash the chums seized their rifles.

The horseman was only about one hundred yards away, and as he caught sight of the rifles pointed toward him he pulled his pony to its haunches.

“Throw up your hands!” yelled Horace.  “If you make a move, we’ll drop you.  You are a prisoner of the Half-Moon Ranch!”

As the horseman heard the name he shouted: 

“Steady, there!  I’m Jim Jeffreys.  What are you up to, anyhow?”