informing you that I was trying to cheer up that poor boy, and also, I asked him to warn Green that your outfit is not particular how it squares an account.'
'Yu dared?' King stormed.
'Oh, I'm brave--you said so yourself,' she mocked. 'It is almost my only virtue.'
'What's yore interest in that damned cow-wrastler?' he rasped.
She smiled contentedly; he was jealous, and therefore victory was hers. 'I like him,' she said easily. 'We have one quality in common--courage; he gave your hired killer more than an even break.'
'I had nothin' to do with that--it was a private affair--I reckon they had met afore,' King defended.
'Oh, yeah,' she murmured.
'Yu don't believe me?' he queried.
Her eyes twinkled. 'As if I could doubt you, George Washington Burdette,' she reproached.
The man glared at her. 'Lu Lavigne,' he said thickly, 'One day I shall twist that slim neck o' yores.'
'That would be a pity--it has been admired,' she smiled. 'Now, I've a score of purchases to make. If Your Majesty has no further commands ...' She slanted her eyes at him and waited, demurely obedient.
Burdette was recovering his poise. 'Yo're a provokin' little devil,' he said. 'Lemme come an' help with the shoppin'.'
The girl elevated her hands in horror. 'Mercy me! And what of my character?' she cried. 'It would be all over the town that we were setting up housekeeping together.'
'An' why not?' King said eagerly. 'Come to the Circle B an'--'
'Take the peerless Miss Purdie's leavings, were you going to say?' she asked sweetly.
The change in his face astounded her; stark fury flamed from his eyes. Through his clenched teeth he hissed, 'So the young skunk blabbed, did he? Well, that'll be all, for him. I'll...'
Terrified at the result of her shot in the dark, she hastened to repair the damage. 'If you mean Luce, he said nothing to me of Miss Purdie and yourself,' she urged. 'It was a guess, King, just to tease you, and I'm sorry.'
He scowled at her in savage doubt, but the dark eyes met his steadily, and he knew that, whatever her faults, Lu Lavigne was not a liar. He nodded, as though in answer to his own thought.
'I'm takin' yore word. If yu wanta do Luce a good turn, get him to punch the breeze; this place ain't big enough for both of us--an' me, I'm aimin' to stay. Shall I see yu to-night?'
'I can't prevent you. I shall be attending to my business of helping men to forget they are men,' she said wearily, and turned away.
King Burdette strode up the street, his mind filled by two women. Honey-coloured hair and blue eyes warred with black hair and eyes until, with a sardonic grin, the man decided there was only one way out of the difficulty--he wanted, and would have, both. 'What King Burdette goes after, he gets,' he muttered darkly. As for that cursed cow-puncher and Luce, they were obstacles in his way, and must be dealt with. Whitey had failed, and even now that staggering fact seemed hardly credible. A lurid oath escaped his lips, and a small urchin trailing behind, trying to ape the great man's walk, garnered with glee the--to him--unmeaning words.
'Gee! I'll spring that one on Snubby,' he promised himself. 'Bet it'll make his eyebrows climb some.'
The passing of Whitey and the manner of it aroused great excitement in the hunkhouse of the C P, and at once put the new foreman on a pinnacle. The prowess of the dead gunman was not mere hearsay, two of the notches on his guns having been acquired since his appearance in Windy, and it was commonly believed that only one man in the district would have any chance against him in an even break. This was King Burdette, and though the test had never been made, there were those who held him the faster of the two. At supper, on the night following the killing, the point was being discussed.
'King is fast all right, but yu gotta remember that Green let Whitey git his gun a'most clear before he started,' Curly pointed out.
'A left-handed shot, an' he put the pill plumb atween the eyes,' Moody contributed. 'That's shootin'.'
'Shorely is,' Flatty agreed. 'Hi, Bill, why didn't yu warn us that the noo foreman was a six-gun wizard? One of us mighta called him.'
'He'd 'a' boxed yore ears,' Yago grinned. 'Shucks, Jim ain't so much; o' course, I'm not sayin' he's slow exactly . . .'
His deprecatory drawl was drowned by a volley of scathing expletives which brought a broad smile to his leathery countenance; his friend had made good, and the boys would follow him to hell and back again. The talk veered to other topics, and Moody began to relate a snake episode. Now snake stories in the West rank with fishing yarns in the East, and get much the same credence. This one proved no exception.
'I was 'bout half a mile from the line-house when I a'most rode on to a coupla big rattlers thrashin' about in the grass,' Moody began. 'The funny thing was that though they were fightin' they seemed to be tryin' to git away from one another. Pretty soon I savvied the trouble: they musta bin wrastlin' an' some way had got their tails tied together; o' course, the more they pulled the tighter the knot got, an' there they was, tuggin' an' strikin' like all possessed.'
'An' yu got down, untied 'em, an' they lifted their hats, bowed politely, an' went off arm in arm,' Curly suggested.
'I did not,' the narrator replied. 'I blowed the heads off'n them reptiles. If yu don't believe me, ask Strip; I showed 'em to him when we passed the place later. Ain't that so, Strip?'
Levens grinned widely as he said, 'Yeah, but I figure yu shot them varmints first an' tied their tails afterwards.'
A yell of derision greeted the statement and a rush was made for the tale-teller. In the midst of the ensuing hubbub Yago slipped away and went in search of his foreman. He found him sitting in front of his own quarters, smoking and gazing reflectively at the valley, over which the last rays of the sinking sun were shedding a golden radiance. Squatting beside him, he rolled a smoke, and for a time there was silence. Then, when the red disk had disappeared behind the shoulder of Old Stormy, and the purple shadows were deepening in the hollows, Yago said:
'It was a frame-up, Jim; the Burdettes meant to get yu.'
The foreman's slitted eyes rested on him. 'Yo're that bright to-night, Bill, I can't hardly bear to look at yu,' he said with gentle sarcasm.
'Quit yore foolin',' his friend retorted. 'They'll try again; yu gotta keep cases.'
'I had a message from Luce sayin' just that,' Sudden said.
'From Luce Burdette?' Bill cried amazedly.
'Through him, I oughta said. Actually, it was sent by Mrs. Lavigne.'
Yago emitted a snort of disgust. 'Hell's bells, Jim, don't yu get cluttered up with a petticoat,' he urged.
'I ain't no right to, anyway, till I've found them ferias,' the foreman mused, his mind on the past.
Yago was silent for a while; he knew of the strange quest which had made a wanderer of his companion. Then he blurted out :'They say she's King Burdette's woman.'
'Liars are plenty prevalent in places like this,' Sudden told him, and smiled into the thickening gloom. 'Alla- same, ol'-timer, she sent me the warnin'.'
Even had Yago any reply to this, the appearance of Purdie and his daughter would have closed his mouth. The rancher nodded to both.
'Well, yu scotched one snake, Green, but there's others in the nest,' he said. 'Yu'll need to watch out.'
'I'm aimin' to,' the foreman smiled, 'but yu'll have me all scared to death. Yu just said what Yago was rammin' home, an' before him, Luce Burdette.'
'He warned yu? Whyfor, I wonder?' the rancher queried.
'But if he has quarrelled with his brothers, Dad,' Nan suggested.
'Bah ! There's somethin' back o' that,' the old man grunted.
The girl said no more. She had not dared to tell her father of the scene in the glade and the humiliation to which King Burdette had been subjected, and which--knowing the man--she was sure he would never forget or forgive. It was left to Green to reply.
'I still think yu've got Luce sized up wrong, Purdie,' he said quietly, and Nan's heart warmed to him. True, he had shot down a fellow-being less than twenty-four hours ago, but she was Western bred, knew that the fight had been forced upon him, and that he had slain, in self-defence, a man who was not fit to live.
'Have it yore own way, but don't let him get behind yu,' the rancher said harshly. 'What did the marshal
