“He’s a smart one, all right,” laughed Frank. “And if those rustlers have had him penned up all this while, he’s managed to break out at last, and come home.”
“Say, wouldn’t it be a great stunt now, if some of the boys could follow his trail back to Where he was kept in a corral. That would tell us, Frank, just how Pedro Mendoza manages to disappear, whenever he runs a bunch of cattle off.”
“Well, perhaps it might be done yet, impossible as it seems,” observed Frank.
“What makes you say so?” demanded the other.
“You see, Old Baldy has a marked hoof,” Frank went on.
“Different from those of other steers, you mean?” asked his chum.
“Yes. It’s got a queer twist that makes it look much longer than his other hoofs. The boys all know it, too. Spanish Joe used to say the animal must have got caught in a cleft of the rocks when small, and his hoof grew that way.”
“But, Frank, could any cowboy track Old Baldy all the way across plain and desert to the mountains, if he came from there, perhaps all of forty miles?”
“Under ordinary conditions I’d say no,” Frank answered promptly; “but you remember that we had a rain two days ago, which is quite remarkable for this country. That laid the alkali dust; and eyes trained to that sort of thing might do wonders. But that we’ll have to put up to dad and Bart Heminway, the foreman of Circle Ranch.”
“Here’s Old Baldy, looking to see if you got the wolf,” remarked Bob.
The gaunt-looking old steer did indeed seem to be beset with curiosity. Standing there, with head thrust out, he was sniffing the air, as though possibly the scent of blood came to his nostrils. Frank tossed the body of the wolf down on the ground, and then with his chum rode back a little distance to see what the steer would do.
“He’s going up to smell of the wolf, Frank!” exclaimed the Kentucky boy.
“That’s what he is!” echoed Frank, as he watched the big beast approach, and finally bend his horned head to sniff at the gray-coated robber who had, in times past, stolen many a calf, and partly grown heifer, from the herd, as the animals grazed in some dangerous spot.
“How about the brand; has it been changed?” asked Bob, seeing the flank of the returned steer turned toward them.
“It’s been burned out entirely; but no new one made yet,” Frank replied.