Had Walt Lampson known of the coming peril he would not have been at the Star Circle, laughingly telling his men of sending Whitey on a wild-goose chase, that would end with his spending a night in the saddle, facing a blinding storm.
Lampson and all the men he could summon would have been heavily armed, dashing at full speed toward the threatened herd.
Buck Milton, the range boss, made a better impression on Whitey than any other man he had seen at the Star Circle.

He was tall, blond, sinewy.

He was thoughtful and serious, and not ill-natured.

He looked like a man who could take a joke which he might not understand any too well, and put up a fight in which he would prove a deadly factor.

In short, he was a character you would look at twice, and Whitey was surprised to find him in the Star Circle outfit.
Hank Dawes handed Buck a letter, which Whitey took to be instructions from Walt Lampson, and Buck read it, talked to Hank a moment, and when Buck rode over to where Whitey waited with Injun, he was smiling.
"There won't be no cuttin' out t'day," he said.