seven o'clock
To-morrer night at Gooseberry ! '' Then was such a scene of hurry and bustle and excitement as the Bar T had seldom witnessed . The parting injunctions were to bring extra horses and plenty of rope , with the accent on the rope , and a significant look thrown in . By seven o'clock , the time that Larkin , bloody , humiliated and suffering , would already have paid his penalty , there was scarcely a soul at the Bar T ranch , for the cowboys had disappeared across the plains at a hard trot . The Bar T punchers were sent out on the range to scour for tracks of the fugitives , but , after following them some distance from the river bottom , gave up in despair when a night herder admitted that the Bar T horses had been feeding in the vicinity the night before , thus entangling the tracks . Meantime the cook was preparing food for the punchers to carry , guns were being oiled and overhauled , knives sharpened , and ropes carefully examined . Yet as the men went about their duties there was a kind of dazed , subdued air in all they did , for it was , indeed , hard to realize that the ranch owners of nearly a quarter of Wyoming 's best range had disappeared into the empty air apparently without a sound or protest .