“Think we better go any farther?” asked Ted, when they had come this far.

“Yes.  Let us go on,” replied Stella.  “We have plenty of time, and I would like to see just how big this ranch is.”

“Don’t forget the red bull,” said Ted, as he closed the gate behind them.

“I’ve seen many a dangerous bull before,” laughed Stella.

“If we find him and he takes after us, keep on the far side of me.  I don’t much fancy that pony you’re on.”

“I don’t myself.  I wish we had a bunch of Moon Valley ponies here to ride.  I’ve never seen any that could come up to them.”

They were following a trail that led directly into the west.  It was a cattle trail, and Ted’s practiced eye told him that it led to water.  Several miles to the west he saw the plain became broken.

“There’s water over there,” he said.

“That’s where we’ll find the cattle,” answered Stella.  “Do you want to go that far and look at them?”

“I will if you think you can stand it.”

Stella looked at him scornfully.

“I guess this beast will go the distance,” she answered, giving the little gray a clip with her quirt, and galloping ahead of Ted, who was not slow to follow.

As they proceeded the ground became more and more broken.

“I believe there is a bit of ‘bad land’ over there,” said Ted, pointing forward.

Still they saw no cattle, although Colonel Billings had told him that morning that his greatest herd, the one he wished the boys to examine with the view to purchase, lay in the big west pasture.

But all they could see so far was the broad stretch of green prairie and the low line of the rough land in the distance.  Not a living thing was in sight.

The only movement was the flying shadows of the white clouds over the prairie, and the waving of the deep, rich grass when a vagrant breeze swept by.

But suddenly Ted pulled in his pony, and shaded his eyes with his hand, staring into the west.

“What is it?” asked Stella, reining in.

“I thought I saw something red shoot across the horizon to the west, where you see those gray rocks,” answered Ted.

“A cow—­or, perhaps, the dangerous red bull,” laughed Stella.

“Nothing like that.  It wasn’t the right color.  Did you ever see a scarlet cow?”

“Never did.”

“Well, the thing I saw was scarlet, and it was not shaped like a cow.”

He was still looking intently into the west.

“There it is again!” he exclaimed, unlimbering his field glasses.

After a moment of intense scrutiny, he raised the glasses suddenly to his eyes.

“By Jove!” he cried, “it’s a motor car, and I believe it’s 118.”

“Impossible!” cried Stella.

“No, entirely possible,” said Ted intensely.  “Don’t you see if it was this fellow Checkers who got the machine from the agent by false pretenses he would take it as far away from town as possible?”