"Oi la!" fairly screamed the Chinese, as, with a quick gesture toward his
long queue, he scuttled toward the cook house, which stood in the midst of
the other low ranch buildings. "Glub leady alle samee light now!" Hop Loy
cried over his shoulder.

"It better be!" ominously observed Pocus Pete, foreman of the Bar U ranch,
one of the best-outfitted in the Rolling River section. "It better be!
Those boys mean business, or I miss my guess," the foreman went on. "Hard
work a-plenty, I reckon. Wonder how they made out?" he went on musingly as
he started back toward the bunk house, whence he had come with a saddle
strap to which he was attaching a new buckle. "If things don't take a turn
for th' better soon, there won't any of us make out," and, with a gloomy
shake of his head, Pocus Pete, to give him the name he commonly went by,
tossed the strap inside the bunk house, and went on toward the main
building, where, by virtue of his position as head of the cowboys, he had
his own cot.

Meanwhile the crowd of yelling, hard-riding sand dust-stirring punchers,
came on faster than ever.

"Hi! Yi! Yip!"

"Here we come!"

"Keep th' pot a-bilin'! We've got our appetites With us!"

"That's what!"

Some one fired his big revolver in the air, and in another moment there