Indeed, the dismal honking of the machine called Bill back to the trail, where Sudden came jouncing along like a little, leaky boat laboring through a choppy sea.

Bill rode off without noticing Mary V at all.
It was a little after noon, and the boys were eating dinner at the camp set up close to the creek at Sinkhole cabin.

Sudden, sprawled in the shade of the wagon, was staring glumly at the sluggish little stream, smoking his after-dinner cigar and trying to formulate some plan that would promise results where results were most vital to his bank account.
It would, of course, take two or three days to gather in all the horses on Sinkhole range, and the restless lot in the corral yonder might be a large or a small part of the entire number down there.

Sudden was not worrying so much over those that were left, as he was over what had been stolen.

It seemed to him that there ought to be some way of getting those horses back.