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 it; Mrs. Duke had it down pretty well herself. It was another wonder of an unaccountable place to Peck. His eyes bulged again; he stared at the complacent sheepwoman in amazement too great for words.

"The dickens you do!" he said at last, feebly, almost overcome by the enormity of his surprise.

"Yes," she said. "How's business in St. Joe?"

"Rairin'," said Peck, brightening. "Excuse me a minute—I've got something I want to show you boys."

Tippie looked after him with considerable interest as he unfolded his great length and left the room briskly.

"What's he got them stripes down his pants for?" he asked, turning to Rawlins. "Is he a soldier or something?"

"He's a mail-order man," Mrs. Duke whispered, not waiting for Rawlins' reply. "He's Edith's mail-order beau."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Aunt Lila!' Edith protested, furiously red, about at the end of her endurance for this joke.

"Mail-order?" Tippie repeated, mystified, but not in the least amused, as far as any expression of his features disclosed. "You mean ordered out of the catalogue on one of them yellow blanks?"

Peck was in the door before Mrs. Duke could go into the romantic affair any farther. He came to the table bearing a large folio book of some sort, with a picture in colors of a sprucely dressed man on the cover, which he put down on the cloth. Rawlins recognized it as a tailor's style book. On this Peck spread a number of

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 little squares of cloth, bound by brass clips, sorting among them for the one he wanted.

"I've got a line of nifty suitings to show this spring," he said, offering a block of samples to Tippie, another to Rawlins. "You boys run your eyes over these plaids—Scotch tweeds, genuine imported stuff, can't be matched for the money between here and Chicago."

He centered on Tippie, misled by his curious inspection of the little squares of samples into the belief that he was a promising prospect.

"You ought to have a sport suit or two, just the thing for this sheep business, runnin' over the country—knee pants, you know, free and roomy—just the thing for this sheep business, don't you think?"

"Um-m-m," said Tippie, turning the cloth leaves of the little book of samples.

"I could take your measure to-night and have your suit back here in three weeks, fit guaranteed," Peck proposed enthusiastically. "Or, if you don't fancy a sport suit, I'd like you to run your eye over these coatings and vestings. I've got as fine a line of pantings as you'll find in this country—I defy any tailor between New York and St. Joe to beat 'em, or match my prices and workmanship. If them pantings"

"No," said Tippie, handing back the samples. "I bought me a pair of shoesings and a hatting down at Jasper. I won't be needin' any more clothes for a couple years."

Rawlins withdrew from the company shortly after Peck's mercantile efforts had fallen flat, feeling himself an embarrassment, rather than a help, to Edith in her ridiculous situation. He took his pack to the bunk-

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 house, where he was joined shortly by Tippie. They sat outside with backs against the wall, smoking, becoming quite friendly, much to Rawlins' surprise and gratification.

"Mail-order man," Tippie reflected. "What in the devil did she mean by mail-order man?"

Rawlins explained the situation, giving Edith the innocent end of it, although he did not feel that she deserved it entirely. He could not get away from the thought that she must have been pretty warm in her correspondence with Peck to lure him on a journey so epochal for the tailor as that, but he was almost eloquent in his assurance that the young lady of the ranch was miserable over the adventure the way it had turned out, sharing with Tippie the confidence she had placed in him that afternoon.

Tippie was keen for the diversion it would afford them to work out a scheme for the discomfiture and routing of the mail-order beau. He pledged his full assistance, giving Rawlins to understand that he was one of the attaches of the ranch thenceforward.

"I'd like to put a split stick on that feller's tail," Tippie said. "I'd like to see him throw his feet and run."

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expected to hang around that ranch expecting to do nothing but talk and eat canned corn with a spoon he had bet on the wrong card. That was the substance of the information Tippie put into Dowell Peck's private ear early next morning. Come along out and help dip sheep, and get his first taste of what he must expect if he carried out his plans for marrying into a sheep family.

Peck took the order with good humor, even with eagerness to show himself a man among men. Mrs. Duke was barred from any part in the operation, keen as she was to bear a hand. When he wanted any women mussin' around in such affairs, Tippie said, he'd express his desire in plain words.

The sheepwoman was quite in accord with Tippie's apparently inhospitable attitude toward Peck. Noman could loll around under her roof eating the ham and canned corn of idleness. Rawlins' initiative in putting his hand to the things he found to be done around the place had made a hit with her. By that ready spirit and proof of competence he had won a job. She had fixed that with Tippie last night before the foreman joined the adventurer at the bunk-house.

They outfitted Peck with a sheep-herder's brown duck overalls and jumper, although they were unable

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 NOW COMES A VALIANT MAN gt to find a pair of shoes or boots on the place that would fithim. Peck's feet were extensive. If traction would get him there, Peck was equipped to go to the top. His pride increased as he tried and rejected the puny footgear handed him by Mrs. Duke where he sat on the kitchen steps in his stockinged feet. If they had any man's shoes, he said, bring them along.

Mrs. Duke was greatly impressed by the size of Peck's feet, although she seemed a little disappointed when one of the late Duke's hats fitted him exactly. It was an old black hat, low in the crown, broad in the brim, flapping, greasy, bandless and forlorn. But it fitted Peck as if it had been modeled to his head.

"Yes, Mr. Duke was a sharp-headed man like you," she said, softly reminiscent. "He didn't have a business head, but he was a tender-hearted man."

Peck did not present a very engaging figure in the sheep-herder outfit. The overalls had been designed for a broad man, the jumper for a short one, but Peck appeared to get a good deal of fun out of the rig, posturing and posing to the great edification of Mrs. Duke. She said he was the comicalest feller she ever saw, and poked him in the back, and told him to go on.

Tippie delegated Peck to the business of driving the sheep out of a little pen which held only about a dozen, into the trough of dip. It was not a very savory mixture, the sheep were not disposed to plunge into it for the little swim, Rawlins standing aloft to shove their heads under as they passed. Nothing but coercion availed against the creatures' antipathy for the dip. Peck did not spare himself the labor. He pushed them along, calling "Yo, yo, yo!" after the example of Tip-

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 pie and Rawlins, enjoying the vocal part of it greatly, in which he very soon excelled.

That was a small job, and soon done. Peck was proud of the dip that had splashed on his hands and face as a boy is proud of a bloody nose. He asked Tippie how he had done, glowing in satisfaction of his own performance, bidding for a boost.

"You'll be worth as much as a dog around a band of sheep in a year or two," Tippie replied.

Peck laughed, unconscious of how nearly that was a compliment. Rawlins saw that Tippie wouldn't have said it if he had meant it, for no sheepman will admit a beginner ever can become as valuable as a dog.

"Well, if that's all, I think I'll go in and scrub up and shave," Peck proposed.

"That ain't half," Tippie corrected him severely. "This is your day for makin' good. All of these mail-order fellers 're handed over to me. I've got to see the first one of 'em yet to make good."

"All of which?" Peck inquired, head to one side like a chicken looking at the sun.

"Mail-order fellers, I said; these beaux that Edith orders by mail. It's a rule of this ranch no man's fit to marry her if he can't make good. The same test I've always put the rest of 'em to I'm goin' to put you to. If you fall down on it you pack up and light out of here without another word. If you don't want to go up agin this test, you're out. You pack up your duds and go."

As Tippie delivered this in his close-mouthed, nasal growl, apparently so resentful and severe, Peck's crawfish eyes seemed to push out a little farther. The

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 warmth of his pride in the recent job cooled, the animation faded out of his sharp face.

"I didn't know there ever was another man out here settin' up to Edith," he said, helpless as if somebody had broken him in two. "Has there been—been—many of 'em?"

Tippie took a little memorandum book from his pocket and consulted it.

"You make thirteen," he replied. "All of 'em failed. Maybe your luck'll change, you've got the lucky number."

"She never told me there was anybody else, she never told me nothing about no test," Peck declared in injured tone. "Let me ask you one thing?"

"Shoot."

"Has that girl got anything of her own? I mean, is she a pardner in this ranch? Before I go up against any tests for a girl that's had twelve men on the line already, I want to know how much she's worth."

"She's worth a million, if she's worth a red dime," Tippie replied.

"Well, I don't know," Peck demurred. "I ain't got no dead cinch on it she'd have me if I was to put through that test you're talkin' about. She's as cold as kraut, she treats me like a stranger."

"She's been disappointed so much in these mail-order fellers that's come out here from Boston and Kansas City and places. You can't blame her. Show her what's in you and you'll be ace high. This is a dangerous country, men ridin' around achin' to take a shot at a sheepman all the time. You've got to prove you can take care of yourself and her, and protect her

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 property, before she's goin' to spread any 'lasses around on you."

"You said she was worth a million?"

"Nearer two, I'd say, if I was 'praisin' her."

"Well, what is that test you was talkin' about? What's it like?"

"In the sheep country we say to a man: 'I've got a job for you.' If he's the right kind of a man, he says: 'Lead me to it.' We ain't got any use for any other kind of a man. Edith ain't. Missis Duke ain't. Nobody ain't."

Peck stood kicking the dust of the trampled corral like a boy under rebuke. Rawlins was doubtful of Tippie's bold scheme going any farther as he watched the reflection of Peck's thoughts in his face. The man was suspicious; he was looking slyly toward the kitchen door, across which the generous form of Mrs. Duke paraded frequently. He was thinking of an appeal.

"Go on in and ask her about it if you've got doubts," Tippie challenged, rather than proposed, startling Rawlins almost as much as Peck by his penetration. "When you come back, you and me we'll measure it off and mix. No man's goin' to question my word or authority around this ranch. What I say goes."

"All right," said Peck, throwing up his head, recko less as a man who has decided to place his last money on a bet, "I'll go you. Win or lose, I'll go you. Jumpin' or runnin' or standin' on my head—I don't care a dern what it is—I'll go you."

"That's more like it," said Tippie, but grudgingly. "Bring them horses out, Ned."

They helped Peck aboard of a small roan horse

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 with white eyes, a treacherous-looking creature that did not act up to its appearance. It carried its long-legged burden placidly, nipping at things as it went along. Peck's legs were pretty well drawn up in the short stirrups, his knees hugging the animal's shoulders. He preferred that adjustment, he said; it gave him a better grip.

Mrs. Duke watched them curiously as they rode past the house and turned up the road along which Rawlins had come with Edith the day before. She did not hail them, or question them about their purpose as they passed, knowing too well that Tippie had a time and a way for doing what there was to be done, and no satisfaction of her curiosity on this expedition would be had out of him.

Tippie laid a course, once they were beyond sight of the house, which brought them in the most direct way to the fence that marked sheep limit. Here he pulled up, slewing round in his saddle, calling Peck's attention to the fence with a sweeping motion of the hand.

"There it is, young feller. There's your test," he said.

Peck, of course, was no nearer the explanation of the thing than he had been at the beginning. He goggled at the fence, his long neck stretched in the straining, with the curious, baffled expression of a rooster trying to see over the edge of a coop.

"Wire fence," said he.

"Wire fence," Tippie agreed. "That's right. You said it. Wire fence."

"What the dickens has that got to do with it?"

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 Peck wanted to know, testily, a color of anger in his face.

"Everything. Didn't you ever hear of this fence?"

"Me? No. Do you expect me to know about every wire fence in the United States? What's a derned old wire fence more or less to me?"

"Let me tell you," said Tippie portentously. "Come on up here."

He led the way to a hilltop that gave them a view of the fence for a considerable distance, where he drew away from the barrier a few rods, stopping among a growth of shrubs that concealed them pretty effectively.

"It's this way," said Tippie. "The man that built that fence built it agin the law. The land he's holdin' inside of it belongs to me, and you, and Rawlins, and every other citizen of this country that ain't ever used up his homestead right. But we can't go in there and take it. Why? Because that robber inside of that fence says 'No.' He don't give any reason, he ain't got no law nor right back of him, but he says 'No.

"What's to keep you out, then?" Peck asked, contemptuous of the valor of such men.

"Fellers ridin' up and down inside of that fence with pump-guns. That's all. No law behind 'em, no right. Nothing but power and bluff. There's never been a man come into Dry Wood big enough to break the cast-iron cinch Jim Galloway's got on that land inside of his fence. We're looking for that man."

"Huh! You don't expect me to do it?" said Peck.

"I don't," Tippie admitted, "but Edith does. That's your test. I bring all of her mail-order fellers up here and put it up to 'em the same way I've put it up to

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 you. Edith don't ask you to go in there and take up a homestead and hold it down, but she does ask you to show you've got the stuff in you to do it if you had to."

"I don't git you," said Peck.

"Cut that wire—you'll break no law when you do it—and ride two miles inside of that fence to the top of that hill you see off yonder. When you git there, shoot your gun three times, wave your hat and yell. Edith's standin' on a knob back there by the house watchin' for you. That's all you've got to do."

"Yes, you say it easy, but suppose one of them fellers shoots me? It's a dang big risk to ask a stranger to take, I'm here to say!"

"You're playin' for big money. It's worth a big risk."

"I don't know about that," Peck said, twisting his head seriously, his eyes on the hill inside the fence. "What did the other fellers do when you put it to them that way?"

"Seven of 'em tried it, the rest of 'em passed it up."

"What happened to the ones that tried it?"

"Them fence-riders shot 'em. The others"

"The dickens you say! Well, not me, not me!"

"That settles it for you, then," Tippie said conclusively. "You just ride along and foller the fence that way, turnin' when it turns, and it'll take you to Lost Cabin. Put the horse in the livery barn, tell Phogenphole I'll send for it. I'll start Rawlins over with your grips this afternoon."

Tippie headed back toward the ranch, followed by Rawlins, who was full of admiration for the effective method of getting rid of an unwelcome suitor. He

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 had hoped very little for it, feeling that Tippie had allowed somewhat too free rein to his imagination in the number of mail-order men who had come to disaster in the trial of the fence. It did not appear credible that any full-grown man would be simple enough to swallow all that at a gulp, but Peck seemed to have got it down.

Peck was riding slowly along the fence in the direction pointed out by Tippie, a drooping and dejected look about him that was a strong bid for sympathy. It must be that the fellow could write a whole lot better than he talked, or his appearance promised, indeed, to lead a girl like Edith on to the point where he could take her affections as won.

Rawlins rode abreast of Tippie, grinning his appreciation. If the foreman got any pleasure out of the incident, none of it was apparent in his face. It was as solemn as a ham. Rawlins made no comment. He rode along trying to picture Peck's arrival at Lost Cabin, wishing he might be present to hear his explanation of his sudden going from the ranch in that rig, to the liveryman, who had pumped him dry of his romance in the trip over to the ranch.

Tippie looked as if he might say something pretty soon; Rawlins rode on beside him in that hope. They were heading down to the creek when a commotion of hoofs sounded behind them. Peck, riding like a sack of bran, came tearing in pursuit, waving his hand for them to stop.

"Must 'a' seen a rabbit," Tippie said.

"That fence-rider, I expect," said Rawlins.

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 "I guess you'll have to go with him. He ain't got sense enough to last him from here to Lost Cabin."

Peck came jolting up, leaning back on the reins, which he held shoulder-high, bringing the horse to a sliding stop. The little roan shook its head in surly protest of this treatment, rolling its wall eyes in an effort to see what kind of a man was in the saddle.

"Say!" Peck began, fairly sweating excitement, "I'm game! I'll take you on!"

This was an unexpected turn, for which Tippie was unprepared, as Rawlins could see. It had come when the foreman had concluded Peck disposed of, and out of the way for good.

"Say," Peck went ahead, scarcely breathing in his hurry to get it out of his chest, "I believe you've been stringin' me, right along, about them other fellers. I'm here to call your bluff. You've got to show me where the danger is cuttin' that fool fence and ridin' in there—you've got to show me!"

"All right," Tippie agreed, that being one incidental, at least, over which there would be no difficulty, chancing that one of the fence-riders was somewhere around. "We'll go back."

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had his feathers up properly; he was in a fighting frame. It had taken him a little while to come to the conclusion that he was being made the subject of a conspiracy, the purpose of which was to disgrace him and drive him away from his amorous quest. There was fire in his lobster eyes, the flush of defiance in his face.

"I come from a place where you've got to show 'em," he said as they jogged back toward the fence. "You can't pull any of your bluffs on me. You ain't got no better men out here than where I come from. They ain't makin' 'em any more."

Rawlins was not altogether unsympathetic, nuisance that the fellow was, knowing he was not solely to blame for being there in the character of gallant to the sheeplands belle. He had been led up to it; there was something just a bit too drastic in this method of getting rid of him.

There was no question of the danger Peck walking or running his long neck into if he cut the wire and rode for the hill Tippie had pointed out as the goal. That fence-rider had a mean eye; he would be as sore as a scald to-day in his resentment of the affront he had suffered yesterday, and only too keen to take it out of somebody who looked at a distance like a sheep-

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 man. The chance was against Peck ever coming out alive if allowed to go ahead with this thing.

Rawlins went along in silence, feeling that it was not his day to talk. Tippie might turn it off some other way to save his face, although there did not appear to be any way around the event now. Tippie had a pair of wire-nippers along, and a large, old-time pistol in his saddle holster. He was the type of man familiar to Rawlins in his range experience, who appreciated the joke in proportion to the discomfort, even peril, the victim suffered. There was no telling how far he would go.

"Well, it's up to you to prove it," Tippie said as they drew up to the fence again.

"I'll eat it up," said Peck. "Maybe you could string a greenhorn along with that stuff about seven men gettin' shot at this game, but it don't go with yours truly. Edith's in on this; she's soured on me. But if I was to let you read some of her letters to me you'd think you was in a Turkish bath."

"My notion of a man," said Tippie severely, "is a feller that keeps them things under his hat."

"I was just a tellin' you. I come out here to marry that girl, and I'm goin' to marry her. She didn't fall for me when I got out of that blame hack yesterday—no man can ride over a rough road like that in a hard hat and look the same when he gits there."

Rawlins was looking along the fence; Tippie was engaged likewise. The fence-rider was not in sight along the mile or two that could be seen on either hand. It was a likely moment for Peck to make his start.

Peck got off his horse, going across the saddle to do

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 it. He stood spying around a little while among the bushes, selecting the tallest one, which was considerably above his head, which he bent down and tied his handkerchief to the tip.

"I want something to head back to," he explained. "Give me them nippers."

Tippie handed the tool to him. In a moment Peck had the wires down. He came back to his horse, returned the nippers to Tippie, held his stirrup with both hands, elevated his long leg and inserted his foot.

"You'd better take my gun," Tippie suggested.

"Wait till I git on him," said Peck.

He hung the pistol over the saddle-horn, sawed on the reins, flapped his knees against the horse's shoulders and clucked. Tippie reached over, a malicious pleasure in his glum face, and cut the animal a sharp blow with his quirt. The horse started with a bounce that nearly upset Peck. The clip of his hunched knees held him, although he lost a stirrup, and he had the fortune to hit the cut panel of fence by his erratic steering. The last they saw of him among the bushes inside the fence he was scraping the horse's side with his foot like a man trying to climb a blank wall, in his desperate efforts to regain the stirrup.

"Don't you think I'd better go after him and give him the nippers, so he can cut his way out if he's crowded?" Rawlins asked.

"Hle wouldn't have sense enough to do it," Tippie replied. "I don't want him to have 'em, anyhow. Let him figger it out his own way."

So saying, Tippie rode to the bush to which Peck had affixed his handkerchief to mark the hole, snatched

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 the signal down and dropped it on the ground. Rawlins thought that was hardly fair, but he did not remonstrate. He did not feel himself responsible for the outcome of Peck's adventure.

"We'll go up the hill and watch him," Tippie said.

It was rather a silly business, the way it had turned out, Rawlins thought. If Tippie's imagination had been kept in bounds to make the thing look a little more probable, Peck very likely would have kept on his way to Lost Cabin. Suppose, attended by the luck of a fool, Peck should go and come on the business he had undertaken? That would make him a champion in his own eyes; he would set himself up as a prince of valor in that country. He might even think, believing as he did that Edith had a hand in the plot to humiliate him, that he had overcome all obstacles in his way to her heart.

Peck might then claim the girl as the reward of his deed, and stick around until she would have to marry him to get rid of him. Rawlins was glad it wasn't his scheme.

Foolish, he said to himself, thinking of Edith, to write such warm letters to an empty-pated swain like Peck. The mail-order beau had a case. There wasn't a bit of doubt on that.

They pulled up at the top of the hill, where they waited concealed by the tall bushes.

"Look!" said Rawlins, rising in his stirrups, pointing. "There's that fence-rider!"

"Um-m-m," said Tippie. "He was layin' for us, watchin' all the time."

There was a note of satisfaction in the foreman's

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 voice. It was coming out just the way he had calculated it from the beginning.

"He may kill the darned fool!" Rawlins protested.

"Sure," Tippie replied, quite pleased by the prospect, it appeared.

"Don't you think we ought to do something? I'd hate to see anything serious happen to him."

"I ain't got no gun," Tippie replied, his conscience entirely untroubled.

"I'll go back and get some guns, if you say the word," Rawlins offered.

"It'd be all over before you got back. Let him go."

Very likely it would be so, Rawlins knew. Peck was out of sight over the first hill, the fence-rider cutting after him like a streak.

"Anyway, I think I'll go in there and whoop around a little," Rawlins proposed, making a tentative start. "That might split his attention and give old Peck a chance for his neck."

"If you go, you'll go afoot," Tippie said, stern and threatening. "One horse is all I'm goin' to risk on a fool to-day."

"You're the doctor," Rawlins yielded. "But it looks a little raw."

"What did you suppose was goin' to happen?" Tippie inquired.

"I didn't believe the darned fool'd try it."

"Well, neither did I."

"If he comes through with his hide whole he'll think he's won the girl. She'll never get rid of him then."

"He won't be half through," Tippie growled.

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 "He'll have to lick me before he goes back to that house."

Neither the trespasser nor the defender was in sight now. Tippie's face was a shade more stern as he posed in stiff attention, head turned to catch the first sound of encounter beyond the hill. As if unconsciously drifting with his thoughts, he began to ride slowly toward the fence, Rawlins trailing. Tippie was thinking of the horse he had risked in that foolish venture, and the price of it he should be obliged to make good if it were lost. That was plain as the fence posts to Rawlins' eyes.

When shooting began presently over the hill, Tippie's uneasiness increased. He fidgeted, stretching himself, toes in the stirrups, to see something where nothing offered to the anxious eye. It was not Peck's pistol they heard, but a high-powered rifle, fired at intervals, as a man might shoot at something that came into sight by starts.

Rawlins took some hope for Peck from the uncertainty the fence-rider would have on the identity of the trespasser. It was likely he would believe the girl of yesterday had invaded his pastures again, as she had threatened. The fellow hardly would risk shooting a woman, impossible as it would be to mistake Peck's gender a quarter of a mile away.

Peck broke over the top of the hill behind which he had disappeared but a few minutes before. There was no mistaking Peck, although he was half a mile or more distant, his pose in the saddle being somewhat eccentric, and truly original.

The little roan flashed across the bare hilltop, plung-

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 ing down the slope into the bushes, dodging the thick clumps like a rabbit. He was traveling independent of Peck, whose wishes in the course he ignored, if Peck had any thought in that emergency except the one of putting space between himself and that gun. The course the horse was shaping would bring Peck to the fence a long distance from the hole.

Seeing how it was to terminate, Tippie kicked his horse forward, signalling Rawlins to follow. The fence-rider popped up that second as if he had been produced by a trick, taking a crack at Peck from the top of the hill, darting down after him as hot as a hornet.

"He'll corner him and take that horse!" Tippie shouted to Rawlins, who was scrambling to overtake him. "We've got to beat him to it and git that gun of mine!"

Maybe they could do it, maybe they couldn't, Rawlins thought. It all depended on the way Peck's horse took a notion to turn when it struck the fence. Peck had a good lead on his pursuer; his horse appeared to be as fully conscious of its peril as anybody around there. If it happened to head their way when it struck the fence, Tippie could grab his gun from Peck, they could slash a hole and let him through.

They lost sight of the race as they scurried down the slope into a grassy dip, but Rawlins knew Peck was still up and traveling by the report of the rifle that reached them as they rode silently across the spongy ground in that little hollow of green. They clawed up the steep ridge before them, reaching the top to see Peck shoot into a clear spot several hundred

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 yards ahead, making for the fence as if he intended to take it at a jump and go right on.

Only Peck had no such intention. It was improbable that he even realized his proximity to the fence, or anything at all except that he was on the run, a persistent man behind him trying to make a mussy ending of his romantic career. Peck's hat was gone, his reins were flying wild. He was holding to the saddle-horn with both hands, bumping considerably, his long legs clamped on the horse's neck, bending forward in earnest effort to reduce to short and inconspicuous appearance a figure that nature had made uncommonly prominent and long.

The fence-rider was not in sight, that being a place of irregular small hills looking pretty much as if nature's dump-wagons had been emptied of their last loads there, ridding themselves of the left-over from the job. Tippie humped to the race, to get to the spot where Peck must hit the fence before the guard could overhaul him and take the horse as liquidated damages.

It was a hopeless race, as Rawlins could see from the jump-off. They had not covered half the distance when the little roan dashed up to the wires as if he hadn't been figuring on a fence within forty miles.

When he discovered his mistake, the little horse braced himself for a stop, forelegs stiff as posts, hoofs driven into the ground. It was a beautiful slide for home, the horse coming up suddenly with his nose against the wire. Peck was not prepared for this abrupt stop. Perhaps he would not have been prepared if he had-known it was coming. When the horse stopped, Peck rose from the saddle with the ease and

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 celerity of an eagle from his rock, going on over the fence supremely immune from its threatening barbs.

Peck spread like a frog on the leap, or a breaststroke swimmer exemplifying his art. So spread, he came down on his narrow breast-bone in the top of an inhospitable bush, at the exact moment when the fence-rider broke from the shrubbery which fringed the brow of the hill.

Peck's horse gathered himself from the shock of his sudden stop, starting up the fence in the direction of his friends on the outside. Seeing him heading right, Tippie wheeled around and started back toward the cut in the wires, there being no time, under the fence-rider's gun, to make a new opening for the swift little creature that had carried Peck to safe ground and unloaded him.

"Head him off at the gap!" Tippie shouted, neck and neck with Rawlins, the roan coming on hot-foot after them, closing up on them surprisingly. He surely was a corner, Rawlins thought, and he had all the reason in the world for stretching himself and keeping it up. The fence-guard was after him, rifle put away for rope, determined to have the horse, having lost the man.

"Cut in there and head him—he's so scairt he'll pass it!" Tippie yelled, his voice breaking high, his mouth open as he rode.

Rawlins pushed ahead of him, the little roan abreast inside the wire, the fence-rider not more than a hundred yards behind. But no need to rush about heading that little horse off and turning him through the gap. He beat them all to it, knowing where it was as well as

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 the wisest of them. When he came to it he cut through like a cat scuttling under a crib, his stirrups dancing a mocking jig in the eyes of the man who surely would have roped him if they'd had another mile to go.

The roan struck for home, Tippie and Rawlins veering off suddenly from the fence to follow him. When they had pulled out of sight of the irate fence rider, with whom neither of them cared to stop and argue just then, Tippie said he guessed they'd better take a look for Peck and see if he was hurt.

They had no trouble finding the place where Peck had crossed the fence, nor the bush in which he had landed. But there was no Peck around there. Tippie was relieved.

"He's lit out," he declared, positively. "That's the last we'll see of that feller around here. We might as well go on to the house and throw his things in the wagon. Maybe if you'll drive fast you'll overhaul him between here and town."

They swung off in a gallop for the ranch-house, Tippie pretty well pleased with the result of his plot. When they rode over the hill that looked down into the snug little pocket where the ranch buildings stood, they saw the roan horse standing by the corral gate, and something that looked like, very much like, indeed, the leg of Dowell Peck disappearing in the kitchen door.

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sight of Peck's extremity drawing into the sanctuary of the door, Tippie strained his breath through his teeth, making a sound similar to that produced by certain gross feeders when eating juicy fruit. It was meant to express Tippie's stunned condition of amazement, which purpose it answered very well.

"That's him!" Tippie said.

"I'd know that foot if I saw it stickin' out of a mud-hole," Rawlins agreed, immediately forced to close up his face and hold it buckled tight to keep in the laughter that was beating against his teeth.

"He didn't need no horse, he can outrun any horse on the range," Tippie declared, but not as a man giving credit where credit was due.

"He's a wind-splitter, all right," Rawlins said. "He can run like an Arkansaw hog. What's next?"

"I'll show him if I can git him out of that house!"

"Mrs. Duke's likely to give him his walkin' papers, don't you think?"

"No, somehow I don't. She wants that girl married off, she's itchin' to git her off of her hands."

"It oughtn't be much trouble, with all that money," said Rawlins. They were riding slowly toward the house.

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 "What money?" Tippie asked, facing around in his challenging, surly way.

"That million or so you mentioned to Peck. Of course, I understand you stretched it a good deal."

"I wasn't 'praisin' property when I said she was worth a million and more; I was talkin' about the girl. If I was a young man I'd take her ahead of any money. A good woman's worth more to a man than a million of money, any day. Edith ain't got no money—nothing to speak of."

"Is that a fact?"

Rawlins was interested. If that could be poured into Peck's ear it very likely would start him on his way to St. Joe quicker than any amount of plotting against his valor and dignity.

"Her folks died when she was a little tad, left her a few thousand, but nothing to speak of in this country where money's so common it's a bother to pack it around. I remember the day she come here. Duke was alive then. She was a little spindle-shanked, towheaded kid that looked like she'd been raised on soup. I learnt her to ride a horse. And look at her now! They don't grow any purtier, and they don't grow any better."

"I believe you," Rawlins said, with the sincerity of one who had needed no argument to convince him.

"So you can see how it is. If I git a chance to boost anybody she likes I go the limit, and if I have to hit somebody she don't like, I'll hit him double hard."

"Plain enough," said Rawlins.

"Tippie measured the sun and said it was dinner-time when they had put the horses away and thrown them

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Page:Crown Proceedings Act 1947 (UKPGA Geo6-10-11-44 qp).pdf/3

 10 & 11

CHAPTER 44 An Act to amend the law relating to the civil liabilities and rights of the Crown and to civil proceedings by and against the Crown, to amend the law relating to the civil liabilities of persons other than the Crown in certain cases involving the affairs or property of the Crown, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.

E it enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1. Where any person has a claim against the Crown after the commencement of this Act, and, if this Act had not been passed, the claim might have been enforced, subject to the grant of His Majesty’s fiat, by petition of right, or might have been enforced by a proceeding provided by any statutory provision repealed by this Act, then, subject to the provisions of this Act, the claim may be enforced as of right, and without the fiat of His Majesty, by proceedings taken against the Crown for that purpose in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

2.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Crown shall be subject to all those liabilities in tort to which, if it were a private person of full age and capacity, it would be subject:—
 * (a) in respect of torts committed by its servants or agents;
 * (b) in respect of any breach of those duties which a person owes to his servants or agents at common law by reason of being their employer; and Rh


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 a forkful of hay. After dinner, he said, they would drive out to the range. The men would be needing grub. If they ran low on it they would butcher sheep, and the old lady didn't like that.

Edith met them on the kitchen porch, appreciative of what they had tried to do for her, but downcast because of the failure. She couldn't get a laugh out of it at all. The disappointment overclouded the humor of Peck's dramatic return to the kitchen door.

"He came back like he belonged here," she said.

"Where's he at?" Tippie inquired.

"In there," Edith replied, nodding hopelessly toward the door.

"Tell him there's a man out here wants to see him on business—wants to give him an order for knee pants," Tippie requested. He peeled off his leather coat, took off his hat, pushed up the sleeves of his jersey as if he prepared to wash.

"It wouldn't work, Elmer," she said glumly. "He's strung out on the sofa with a wet towel on his head. Aunt Lila's takin' care of him like a sick sheep."

Elmer said no more. He plunged into the basin, washing himself viciously. Edith returned to the kitchen, where she had set out their dinner on the end of the long table. Mrs. Duke joined them after the meal had begun.

"I never saw a man shook up like that long-hungry feller was when he come slammin' in here a little while ago," she said. "It was quite a while before I could git head or tail of what had happened to him."

"Um-m-m," said Elmer, busy over his plate.

"It was a fool thing for you to do," she said, mildly

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 corrective, shaking her head over the broken-down plot gravely. "That feller might 'a' shot him. I don't want to be mixed up in no murder. It's bad enough to nearly lose a horse."

"Nowhere near it," Tippie denied.

"It ain't hardly right to steer a green stranger into a dangerous piece of business like that," Mrs. Duke went on with her lecture, all the time putting things on her plate, cutting, mixing, stirring, making ready. "I guess we'd be as green in his ways as he is in ours if we was to go to the city. The poor feller didn't know he wasn't welcome here; he didn't come on his own move. He was led on to it, he had a good excuse. The way you boys has played your hand I don't see what Edith can do but marry him now. You put it up to him that way, and he took the bet. After leadin' him on with them letters, too!"

"I never led him on, Aunt Lila," Edith protested, red to the ears, weakly indignant, knowing that she was in no small measure to blame. "I never expected he'd come here any more than I expected the moon to fall."

"Maybe you didn't expect him, but you led him on. It was like givin' a man your note and never expectin' him to ask you to pay it."

"Well, I'll not pay it!" Edith declared in no uncertain spirit.

"I don't see what else you can do and be honest with the man," Mrs. Duke insisted. "He's got a good business back in St. Joe, he tells me."

"It wasn't any more than a little innocent pastime as far as I was concerned," said Edith, no longer slow

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 to defend herself publicly, seeing that she was publicly arraigned. "You ought to have sense enough to understand that, even if he hasn't."

"When I was a girl we didn't have mail-order beaux," Mrs. Duke said, superior in her uncontaminated innocence. "But I know right and wrong, and the way you're treatin' that boy's wrong."

"Boy! Aunt Lila, he's thirty-five, if he's a day."

"He's a boy in experience. He don't know what you mean when you write 'Yes' and say 'No.

"Did it hurt him when the horse pitched him over the fence?" Rawlins inquired, hoping to turn the current of Mrs. Duke's virtuous argument.

"His face is scratched up a little, but he didn't break anything, as far as I can tell," Mrs. Duke replied.

"No, he couldn't have made that time with anything broken," Rawlins told her. "He had farther to go than the horse, but I believe he nearly beat it."

"It ain't no laughin' matter," she reproved. "Just look at the mess we'd 'a' been in if he'd 'a' been killed."

"Trouble to find a coffin long enough without doublin' him," said Tippie, rancorously.

"Well, you let him alone," Mrs. Duke admonished. "When he finds out he ain't wanted I guess he's got sense enough to leave. I took him for a kind of a joke myself till I saw him come in that door with his eyes popped out of his head so fur I could 'a' hung my shoes on 'em. His face was a-bleedin', he was a-gaspin' and a-gappin' like a feller that was about gone. He stood leanin' his back agin the door, holdin' it shut like he was scairt somebody was tight after him, openin' his mouth without a bit more sound comin'

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 out of him than a snake. Mr. Duke acted that way one time when he took a spoonful of camphor. It cut off his breath, slick. I thought that time he was a goner, sure as you live."

She lapsed off into silence there, eyes on her dinner, as if overcome by the recollection of Duke's agony. Rawlins glanced over at Edith. She was not taking much enjoyment out of that meal.

"Yes, you boys leave Mr. Peck to me," Mrs. Duke ordered, rather than requested. "I guess when Edith makes up her mind for good she won't have him, he'll pack up his things and go."

"It's ridiculous for you to talk that way, Aunt Lila," Edith said. "I never intended to have him, I never thought of having him. I told Mr. Rawlins how it was—Elmer understands how it was. Nobody but you and that silly fool thinks there was anything serious about it at all."

"No man's goin' to come away out here from St. Joe to see a girl without reason," Mrs. Duke argued.

"He came because he's got a better opinion of his charms than anybody else," Edith returned, hotly contemptuous of Peck's assurance. "He thinks no girl can resist him."

"He thinks you wanted him; I can see that stickin' out all over him," Mrs. Duke insisted.

"I told him yesterday, the minute I took him in the house, it was all a mistake—him coming away out here on a wild-goose chase like that. But he'll not take 'No' for an answer. He's the kind you've got to knock down and drag out."

"Now, honey, don't you worry over it," Mrs. Duke

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 counseled her kindly. "No use in hurtin' the man's feelin's, even if he is simple. You can tell him nice and pleasant you won't have him, and I guess you'll git rid of him without sendin' him over there for them fence-riders to shoot."

"I did tell him nice and pleasant, and the darned fool tried to kiss me!"

"Any dog'll try to lick your face if you treat it too well," Tippie said.

"Well, don't you worry, honey, don't you worry. Just so you don't abuse the feller. I ain't goin' to have him abused, after orderin' him by mail that way, or courtin' him by mail, anyhow. You've got to treat him decent. I guess he's got feelin's, like any other man."

"I don't want him hangin' around," Edith complained. "He told Smith Phogenphole he'd come out here to marry me—I could see that in Smith's old dish face as plain as biscuits on a plate."

"You'd better marry him, then, and save your name," said Mrs. Duke, forgetting her counsel of calmness, throwing in a handful of worry seed already sprouted.

"You talk foolish for a woman of your age sometimes, Aunt Lila," Edith reproved her solemnly.

"I'll bet he's got his ear to that keyhole right now," Tippie said, giving the door a savage look.

"He's stretched out with a wet towel over his eyes"

"I'll stretch him out with a glass over his face!" Tippie threatened, squaring around as if to charge the door.

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 "You let him alone, Elmer. After dinner you and Ned load up a wagon and go out to the boys. You leave Mr. Peck to me."

Mrs. Duke worked herself up into considerable heat over Peck's wrongs, and her position as defender of his well-meaning simplicity. She was a lady who loomed large at the table, seeming to be elevated by a cushion, or a dictionary, or a Dr. Gunn, in the manner many a child of sturdy American freemen received its first contact with knowledge. This was accounted for by the uncommon length of her back, which hoisted head and shoulders to a level with any man when she was sitting.

She was wearing a red dress with white dots, the collar of it somewhat disproportionate to the generous mold of her neck, a very leaflet of a collar indeed, of one width all around, edged with a narrow white binding. It was altogether too juvenile for Mrs. Duke's figure, which, while still growing, was no longer young.

"You can throw that hospital band in with old Alvino's," she directed Tippie. "He's a good herder, that man knows more about sheep than any human I ever saw. You'd think he was related. You'll be a week or more gittin' around to the boys, I guess, won't you, Elmer?"

"Not unless I break a leg," Elmer replied ungraciously.

"Take your time. Let me know how that lawyer feller's doin'—Riley—you know the one."

"Um-m-m," Elmer grunted.

"And after this, you leave Mr. Peck to me."

There was no other way for it, in the face of such

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 direct orders. Tippie told Rawlins she was designing to put something over on him while he was away among the herders stocking their wagons and paying them their wages.

"She can't force that girl to marry him, it's preposterous to think she can," Rawlins said.

"You don't know Lila Duke as well as I do. It wouldn't surprise me to come back and find that girl married to that pair of scissors and sent off to Missouri. It's bad enough to come from there, but it's worse to have to go back."

"Is Edith from Missouri too?"

"Kansas City. Her father was a railroad man, killed in a wreck."

"I feel like her neighbor," Rawlins said.

But he did not see any such end to the mail-order romance as Tippie feared. It was too ridiculous to have a serious possibility in his eyes. Edith was so heartily ashamed of her part in it, of Peck's boasting to the liveryman, and resentful of the fellow's familiarities, that she could not be reconciled to even a friendly footing.

However agreeable Peck may have been in a mail-order course of courtship, he was a disappointment when reared up before Edith on his big flat feet. Rawlins was not particularly concerned in the case at all. Edith was not in a situation deserving any broad sympathy, yet he had been, and still was, willing to bear a hand in prying Peck away from what he doubtless thought to be a pretty good thing.

In the course of a few days a true appreciation of his standing and chances with Edith would penetrate

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 Peck's sharp-roofed head. It was Rawlins' belief they would return to the ranch to find his place at the table empty. So thinking, he drove away with Tippie to the range, four horses to the heavy wagon loaded with supplies for the herders' camps.

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Tippie did not break a leg in that expedition, he was longer about making the round than he had anticipated. There was considerable camp-moving to be done, on account of it being a dry spring and the grazing poor. In June the sheep would be driven to the Government forest reserve in the mountains, leaving the range grass to grow for winter pasturage. Tippie growled about the Government restrictions and rental for the forest reserve as if he had been owner of the flock, resentful of this invasion, as all sheepmen held it, of their personal rights.

During this time on the range Rawlins had borne an inconsiderable part as Tippie's helper. In a few days, the foreman said, he would put Rawlins with the old Mexican herder, whose understanding of sheep was Mrs. Duke's marvel. He would learn under that master of the craft how to handle dogs and sheep, to prepare himself for taking a band on his own responsibility when they went to the mountains for summer grazing. All of which was quite satisfactory to Rawlins, his desire to become a sheepman in no particular diminished by the solitary lives and morose aspect of the herders, alone with their bands of sheep for weeks at a time.

"They returned to the ranch on an evening eight or

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 nine days after leaving it. Edith came running from the house to welcome them, frisking about altogether too gay and light-footed for a reluctant bride, Rawlins thought. Tippie had the same thing moving in his mind, as his first words revealed.

"I see you ain't married," he said.

"Me? I'm farther from it than ever," she laughed.

"Where's he gone?" Tippie inquired, keeping his seat on the wagon, foot on the brake, looking down at her with such stern face and eye of judgment as if to try her on the charge of making away with Dowell Peck.

"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," she replied, in words that did not answer him in the least. "Here—look at this."

She handed him a bit of paper, which Tippie unfolded and read, passing it along to Rawlins without a line of his rueful face softening or hardening, no more change in it, indeed, than a picture of H. Clay on a revenue stamp.

It was a childish-looking piece of writing, immature, uncertain. Rawlins read:

"Well, I'll be ditched!" said Tippie.

Rawlins, standing by the wagon wheel, clung to it and turned loose the charge of laughter that had been accumulating in his chest ever since the arrival of Peck in the sheeplands. The humor of this mail-order romance had grown during their absence until it had

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 burst like a head of cabbage in wet weather. To Tippie it seemed to have no remote relation to comedy. He sat there on the wagon, leaning a little, foot on the brake, looking as glum as if he had been planning for years to marry the widow himself.

Whatever doubt Edith had held in the matter was swept away on the gale of Rawlins' laughter. She joined him, spinning on her heel, bending and weaving like a willow in the wind, happy to be rid of her mail-order suitor even though he had come into the family through another door.

I and Mr. Peck, Tippie quoted ironically. "She's placed him; she's put him where he'll stand all the rest of his life. Mr. Peck he'll toot a darned weak horn by the side of his wife's loud one. I don't know as I could 'a' wished the feller any worse luck."

"Uncle Dowell!" said Edith, looking from one to the other, eyes bright, face lively in appreciation of this new relationship. "Here's your shavin' mug, Uncle Dowell. Do you want some hot water?"

"It won't be no laughin' matter to have that man warmin' his back at the kitchen stove," Tippie said, conjuring up such a picture by his solemn words as to throw the two young ones off in another spasm of hilarity.

"All the loafin' he'll do!" said Edith, disparaging the chance to nothing.

"He's marryin' her for her money, and she's marryin' him for his hair, as the song used to say. Well, for his moustache, anyhow, I guess—that's all there is to the feller, except feet." Tippie growled it as if his animosity grew with reflection. "I hope he'll git

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 his paws on her dough and burn a streak from here to Boston you could drive a elephant through."

"I see him doin' it, right now," Edith said.

"I'd like to see him follerin' a band of sheep in a pair of them knee pantings," Tippie said, yielding at last to the painful process of a grin.

"And a cute little coating with stripes on the back of it like a chipmunk," Edith suggested.

"Or a skunk," said Tippie. His grin spread. It appeared to hurt him outrageously, but provocation was too great; it could not be suppressed.

"Monday. That's to-day," Rawlins said, eager in his anticipation of the return home.

"I've been expectin' them all the afternoon," Edith said, the laughter fading out of her eyes. "They sneaked off Saturday night and left that note."

"It's going to be kind of awkward for you as the jilted lady, isn't it?" Rawlins asked, turning to her vivaciously.

He was sorry for the break next moment. The humor of such a situation was not apparent to Edith. She was grave and thoughtful; her face betrayed some anxiety over her position in the house under that new arrangement.

"I hope the old snipe won't try to boss me around," she said.

"If he does, bust him wide open," Tippie advised.

"Well, hurry on in to supper," she said, briskly. "I was expectin' somebody, and two of one kind can eat as much as two of another, I guess. It's all ready."

She ran into the house, Tippie looking after her thoughtfully.

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Page:Crown Proceedings Act 1947 (UKPGA Geo6-10-11-44 qp).pdf/4

 Rh

Provided that no proceedings shall lie against the Crown by virtue of paragraph (a) of this subsection in respect of any act or omission of a servant or agent of the Crown unless the act or omission would apart from the provisions of this Act have given rise to a cause of action in tort against that servant or agent or his estate.

(2) Where the Crown is bound by a statutory duty which is binding also upon persons other than the Crown and its officers, then, subject to the provisions of this Act, the Crown shall, in respect of a failure to comply with that duty, be subject to all those liabilities in tort (if any) to which it would be so subject. if it were a private person of full age and capacity.

(3) Where any functions are conferred or imposed upon an officer of the Crown as such either by any rule of the common law or by statute, and that officer commits a tort while performing or purporting to perform those functions, the liabilities of the Crown in respect of the tort shall be such as they would have been if those functions had been conferred or imposed solely by virtue of instructions lawfully given by the Crown.

(4) Any enactment which negatives or limits the amount of the liability of any Government department or officer of the Crown in respect of any tort committed by that department or officer shall, in the case of proceedings against the Crown under this section in respect of a tort committed by that department or officer, apply in relation to the Crown as it would have applied in relation to that department or officer if the proceedings against the Crown had been proceedings against that department or officer.

(5) No proceedings shall lie against the Crown by virtue of this section in respect of anything done or omitted to be done. by any person while discharging or purporting to discharge any responsibilities of a judicial nature vested in him, or any responsibilities which he has in connection with the execution of judicial process.

(6) No proceedings shall lie against the Crown by virtue of this section in respect of any act, neglect or default of any officer of the Crown, unless that officer has been directly or indirectly appointed by the Crown and was at the material time paid in respect of his duties as an officer of the Crown wholly out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, moneys provided by Parliament, the Road Fund, or any other Fund certified by the Treasury for the purposes of this subsection or was at the material time holding an office in respect of which the Treasury certify that the holder thereof would normally be so paid. 2


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 "If she's got half as much spunk as I think she has, she'll pack up her duds and scoot," he said.

Bride and groom arrived, in the family buckboard with a sack of oats tied on behind, before supper was over. It was early dusk, the homecoming was proclaimed well in advance by the wheels among the stones at the creek crossing, and witnessed by two who went to the window to see. Tippie was not moved by any curiosity at all. He remained at the table, feasting on canned green beans.

Mrs. Peck turned the team over to her new mate, snatched the suitcase that was wedged in between the sack of oats and the back of the seat, and came hobbling toward the kitchen door, cramped in the legs from her thirty-five miles' ride. Rawlins and Edith hurried back to the table, where they were decorously seated when the mistress of the manse opened the door.

Mrs. Peck burst in on them, in a manner, as if she wanted to come so suddenly that the conventional things which people say, and do not always mean, on such occasions would have no time to pop out at her. To make doubly sure, she began to talk as soon as her red face struck the lamplight.

"Well, you beat me home, after all," she said, addressing Tippie, no word of greeting for her niece, not any coyness or bashfulness about her such as might be expected of even a well-seasoned bride.

"Um-m-m," said Tippie, his mouth full of beans.

Which made no difference in his form of expression at all. It would have been the same from an empty mouth. He was not interested in these goings off and

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 getting married, his indifferent attitude seemed to say. He was not impressed.

Edith was grinning nervously, a little too white for a joyous occasion, all on edge to say something, but lacking the words. Rawlins rose respectfully, greeting Mrs. Peck with a little nodding bow, which she passed like a signal unseen. The bride dropped her suitcase, pushed it snugly against the wall with her foot, shook her skirts, making a dust which spread around her in the lamplight like an aura. She took off her hat, sighing with such intense satisfaction that it was almost a grunt, her manner and expression saying as plainly as words: "Now, that's over with."

"It's awful dry; I don't know when I've seen the range this dry," she said. "How's the sheep lookin', Elmer?"

"Middlin'."

Not a word about the husband, not a word about the wedding, not a hint of her changed status before society and the law. Edith got up, with a pretence at briskness and welcome home, bustling around, taking her aunt's things, running with her hat to put it on the bed, which could be seen through an open door, dashing back to pour hot water in a basin and tone it down to the comfort of Mrs. Peck's red face. All these little attentions the red-necked bride accepted without a nod or smile, only talking to Elmer, or rather at him, about sheep, pulling the tight sleeves up from her large-boned wrists preparatory to ablution.

"It's goin' to make short wool if this dry weather keeps up," she predicted; "it's goin' to he hard on the lambs. How's that lawyer feller, Riley, gettin' along?"

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 "He's no good," said Elmer. "He ain't got as much sense as your—pair of shears."

Mrs. Peck laughed, not seeing the implied slur on the intelligence of her long-forked partner. She went to the door, towel to her face, where she stood listening, peering toward the barn.

"Dowell! hurry on to your supper," she called.

There was no reply. She completed her ablutions, gave her front hair a quick raking before the kitchen glass, and joined the others at the table, filling her accustomed place. Rawlins passed the ham and beans. She did not wait the coming of her new encumbrance.

Peck made his appearance presently, looking somewhat fanned. He pushed the door open doubtfully, or perhaps he was restrained by more modesty than anybody present gave him credit for from presenting himself too suddenly before the company's eyes. He first introduced his head, which he turned and tooled on his long neck with a curious, inquisitive grin.

It seemed that it was Edith he was concerned about, not the others. It was probable the fellow believed she thought herself flouted by this unexpected turn of affairs, and might rush at him and grab his ears. He jerked his moustache with a sneer of triumphant superiority when he saw Tippie and Rawlins at the table, pushed the door wide and entered, assuming a pose of dignity and hauteur that was no more felt than it belonged to him by right.

"Looks like we've got a blow-out goin' on," he remarked lightly, but with a leer in his voice and edged

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 face that seemed to say inferiors soon would be put in their places around that house.

"How much oats did you give them horses?" Mrs. Peck inquired, with a distrusting uplifting of the eyes.

"I give each one of 'em a big double-handful," Peck replied, presenting the measure, speaking proudly of himself, as if he took great credit for a generous deed.

"Double-handful your granny!" his wife said, derisive, disparaging, in her sharp tone. "Punkinhead! don't you know half a peck's a feed for a horse? Go on back and give it to 'em—that little wooden measure you'll see in the bin."

Peck went on the chore, a little taken down. He came back presently, whistling, making out that he hadn't felt the rebuke, which perhaps was the case. As he washed his hands he hummed lightly the tuneof "After the Ball."

"What am I supposed to know about a horse, anyhow?" he asked, simpering as he turned his glassy crawfish eyes on Edith. "I don't hardly know which end you feed him at."

"You're in a good place to learn," his wife assured him, with deep significance, disapprobation of his refined humor in her broad red face.

"I'll git me a style-book on colts; I'll figger 'em down to a fare-you-well," Peck said facetiously. "Well, Edith, old sport, how're they comin'?"

This little friendly sally, as Peck parted the tails of his Prince Albert coat and took blind aim at a chair, did not win him any recognition from Edith. Mrs. Peck rolled her eyes, looking across her nose in reproof at the new asset of her ranch. It was lost on Peck,

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 whose vivaciousness was rising in him like a fever. He passed up his cup toward Edith, smirking familiarly as he held it out. Edith ignored the appeal for refreshment. She brought the coffee-pot from the stove and stood it in its accustomed place on the tray at Mrs. Peck's hand, and retreated.

"I put one over on you, didn't I?" Peck turned to's hoot after her as she left the room. "Ain't you goin' to come and kiss your unkey-punky, tweet?"

"Oh, shut up!" Mrs. Peck ordered, altogether displeased with this attempt to play up his shrewdness in his dealings with the marriageable women of that ranch.

"Comin'," the humorous, irrepressible Mr. Peck returned. He presented his big coffee cup to his wife, giving her the smile that used to knock them over back in St. Joe.

Rawlins excused himself; Tippie pushed back without a word, his pipe already out of his pocket, the other hand fishing around for his sack of tobacco.

"Well, Tippie, did you pay off them guys?" Peck inquired briskly, looking as much like a proprietor as his doubtful standing allowed.

Tippie grubbed around for matches, the little sack of bran in his hand, its yellow strings dangling between his blunt, calloused fingers. He might have been a mile away from any voice of interrogation, assuming from the expression of his face.

"Of course he did, Dowey," the new wife replied for her glum foreman, pleased, and very plainly pleased, to see her husband taking interest in such an essential feature of the business.

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 "Where's the change?" Peck demanded, leaning toward Tippie across the table, his frog eyes starting as if he had a potato in his gullet.

Tippie got up with a bored, pained air, went to the stove, scratched a match, lit his pipe. It was all a pantomime of the utmost disdain, the most lofty contempt. He said nothing; he did not even waste a glance at Peck, who held his waiting pose of demand, long neck stretched across the table as far as it would go, which was no inconsiderable distance. Tippie started for the door, trailing smoke, Rawlins following.

Mrs. Peck's red face grew a shade redder; her big black eyebrows pinched together, running a crease down her fat nose. She didn't like Tippie's attitude of contempt for the specimen of civilization she had taken to her bosom. Peck was quick to see this; his hauteur increased as his courage came a little farther out of the hole.

"Where's the change, I said?" Peck repeated, beating time to the demand with the flat of his hand on the table.

"I ain't accountable to you," Tippie replied loftily, still making his streak of smoke toward the door.

"That's where you're off!" Peck declared, his severity insolently overbearing. "I'm the lawful and legal head of this fam'ly. I want them figgers, I want to know how much you paid out and where the balance of that money is. That's what I want to know."

Tippie was standing with his hand on the doorknob, Rawlins at his heels. At this insolent challenge to his business methods, if not his honesty and honor,

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 Tippie turned with a start so sudden and threatening that Rawlins caught him by the shoulder and pressed him back against the door.

"Ya-a-a! you can't run none of your sandines on me!" said Peck, leering and goggling in his feeling of security. "You tried to git me shot up, you tried to bluff me out of here, but I turned the trick on you, I punctured your sausage. I've had enough of you—you're fired. And you too, Rawlins. You're both fired. You git to the doodle—you git to—hell out of here!"

"Tut, tut, Mr. Peck; tut, tut!" said Rawlins, with ladylike remonstrance, greatly entertained by Peck's effort to show himself a real rough sort of sheepman with warts on his neck.

"Does that go?" Tippie inquired, turning to Mrs. Peck.

"He's the head of the fam'ly; what he says goes," Mrs. Peck replied, enforcing the decision by a solemn nod.

"All right," said Tippie, "but there's goin' to be a clean-up around here before I go."

He knocked the fiery charge out of his pipe against the palm of his hard hand, spilled the embers on the floor and smothered them with his foot. Mrs. Peck understood the movement as a preliminary to a charge that must end in the overthrow and humiliation of Peck. She grinned, winked, held up a placating hand.

"What he says goes—just so fur," she said. "He's fired you, Elmer, but I've hired you over. I need you. Go ahead with your work the way you always have. But that don't go with Mr. Rawlins," she supple-

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 mented, perhaps to save Peck's face. "He's fired. Pay him off and let him go."

"Now, dern you!" said Peck.

The fired man and the hired man went out, going towards the barn.

"Well, he's nearly half boss, anyhow," Rawlins commented. He was not in the least troubled over being the first object upon which the new master of the ranch had exercised his authority and made it stick.

"I'll squnch that feller under my foot like a toad if I ever ketch him five miles away from home," Tippie engaged. "He looks to me like a fishin' worm. He ain't got no more blood in him than one. I'll bet he's as cold as a dog's nose. She cert'nly drawed a picture card, right from the bottom of the deck."

"He's beginning to show executive ability," said Rawlins.

"I'll execute him; I'll rub him out like a chalk-mark on a barrel of kraut if he ever opens his head to me about change agin."

"I wish you all kinds of luck in your good intentions," Rawlins laughed. "I don't suppose he'll pitch me out on my ear if I camp in the hay to-night?"

"If you'd let him, that wouldn't be half what you'd deserve."

"I'll hit the road early in the morning—I don't want to get hurt. He's a bad man, Elmer; he swore. Didn't you hear him swear?"

"It come out of him like coughin' up a tack," said Elmer. "That old woman can give him cards and spades and beat him at that game with her eyes shut.

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 He's got a whole heap to learn he never heard anything about."

Tippie got out the much desired change after he had lit the lantern, and paid Rawlins a month's wages at the current rate for herders, which was forty dollars and found in those days. He added fifteen dollars to take the place of rations, protesting that it was only just, and according to custom. Rawlins did not know about the custom, but he approved Tippie's way of it, right or wrong, and pocketed the money without scruple, feeling that the first chapter of his adventures in the sheeplands had come to no very glorious end.

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had worked his little flock a long way from sheep limit; Rawlins had some trouble locating him. The old man was crippling around with rheumatism, feeling rather blue, full of forebodings of hard luck for sheepmen in the Dry Wood country that year. It was starting badly, he said; no rain, no grass, sage making a slow growth. Nature was laying a conspiracy against the sheepmen, especially the little ones, trying to wipe them out for good.

The old flockmaster had ranged his sheep miles from the place where Rawlins had first encountered him, his battered wagon on top of a hill, as sheep wagons usually are stationed, overlooking a rugged and unpromising stretch of country that seemed to offer sufficient proof of the old man's contention that nature had turned its hand against the sheepmen in that place. He was about ready to quit, he declared, although not very heartily. If he could find somebody fool enough to buy him out he'd strike out for some hot springs he knew about over in the Wind River reservation and soak the misery out of his hinges. But there were no such fools as that ranging around any more. They seemed to be all used up.

To make conditions morg gloomy, the Government had notified sheepmen that only half the usual number

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 of sheep were to be permitted in the forest reserves that summer. The reserves had been overgrazed, the rangers claimed, although the ancient flockmaster believed it was all part of a conspiracy to kill the sheepmen. True or false, the sheepmen would have to leave half their flocks on the plains that summer, where they would eat the range bare, leaving no provision for winter. It was a woeful outlook. It took the heart out of a man.

All this Clemmons poured into his visitor's ear as they sat on the sunny hillside above the grazing sheep, which were foraging industriously among the sage, the trembling complaint of the lambs rising in almost human appeal from hollows and braes.

"Well, where have you been since you got fired by that long-hungry speciment the Widder Duke's took in to raise?" Clemmons asked, after he had emptied himself of his own news and grievances, which every man considers of first importance, everywhere.

"So you've heard about that?" said Rawlins, surprised that news should travel in that thinly peopled country about the same as anywhere else.

"Elmer Tippie come by the other day. He was tellin' me."

"Oh, I see. I've been looking around a little on my own hook since Peck fired me."

"I thought maybe you'd left the country, or got a job with one of the big fellers further north."

"No, I didn't strike any of them. I've been back of sheep limit, spying out the country."

"Oh, you've been inside of Galloway's fence, heh?"

"Yes, I knocked around in there several days."

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 "Purty country in there along that crick."

"Fine. Grass shoe-top high over hundreds of acres, a crop of hay coming on there that would winter a lot of sheep, and not a head of cattle or a sheep in sight. Galloway seems to be hoggin' more than he can use."

"He winters up there. So you was in there lookin' around, heh? What're you figgerin' on? Tryin' to bust up his combination?"

"Nothing very startling, I guess. I just wanted to see what it was like. I'm on my way down to Jasper. Wondered if you wanted to sell a horse?"

"Might as well," said Clemmons; "might as well begin to clean up and make ready to leave." His end was in sight there, anyhow; he was a whipped man. In spite of this gloomy talk, Rawlins found the old codger shrewd enough at a bargain. He had a line of antique specimens, of about his own period, it appeared, which he tried to work off first. Seeing that he was not dealing with a man who never had met a horse face to face before, the sheepman produced a younger animal, but a scrawny one, wild and devilish, that jumped as if socked with a branding-iron when a hand was laid on it.

Unpromising as it was, Rawlins drove a bargain for the creature, a ratty, bald old saddle going with it. He considered himself pretty well skinned when he gave up thirty-five dollars for the outfit. Clemmons said the horse's name was Graball. He admonished Rawlins to be kind to him, with a watery look about the eyes as if it wrung his smoky old heart to let it go. Rawlins promised to be as kind as Graball deserved,

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 although he knew that kindness was something the beast never had known in its life.

Graball was casting his winter coat, which was long, dingy-brown, weather-bleached. It was coming off in patches, showing a promising new covering that looked like open grass in a bushy meadow. The animal had a bumpy, bony head, but bright, alert, intelligent eyes. He never had been shod; his long hoofs were chipped as if he had begun to grow toes, like a camel. Not a very prideful mount, certainly, but one in which its owner had hope.

The journey down to Jasper fully met the best hopes which Rawlins had reposed in his unpromising steed. Graball justified his name by eating everything in sight at every opportunity, but he had wind and a good leg, and was enlivened by the spirit of youth and spring. A currycomb on the outside of him, a course of oats within, might turn Graball into a fair sort of horse in time, his new owner believed.

Rawlins had evaded Clemmons' sharp inquiry into the purpose of his visit to Jasper. He was beginning to understand the reticence of sheepmen. There was wisdom in keeping one's own business under cover in a country and a calling in which everybody was on the look-out for an advantage. Rawlins was on his way to the railroad and telegraph wires to put into practice some of the things he had learned as editor of a political paper.

There was a congressman from the wheat belt—the golden belt, they called it there—of Kansas who owed the one-time editor something on account for political favors. This man was in Washington,

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 covered by glory and a long coat. Department doors were open to him; public records were as accessible to him as the almanac hanging back of the kitchen stove at home.

What this adventurer in the Dry Wood country wanted to be informed upon through the Departments and records was, why a block of public lands shown to be open to homestead entry on the Government land-office maps should be surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded against lawful entry by bad-looking men with rifles under their legs.

Was there some agreement, secret arrangement, compact of favoritism, between the Department heads and this western senator under which he was permitted to scorn the law and the rights of the landless? That was what this man from Kansas wanted to know.

Did Senator Galloway hold this big piece of grazing and agricultural land under a lease that was not a matter of public record? If not, what was there in the way, but the fence and the armed men guarding it, to prevent a qualified person exercising his right of homestead entry thereon?

These were the questions which this indignant Kansas man was going down to mail service and telegraph wires to shoot into his home congressman's ear.

As has been said, Jasper was at the end of the railroad in the kingdom of sheep at that time. It was not very important in appearance. It was very much like a beggar who goes about in tattered garments weighted down by gold pieces and padded with bank notes. Big money was so common to the daily transactions of the town that sheep-herders and others who came there

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 to waste their few hundreds on its dissipations were looked upon with scorn.

The mark of sheep was on Jasper. The grease of wool was on the planks of the long platform and loading sheds at the railroad station; the grease of wool from sheepmen's clothes had polished the chairs in the hotel, and left its rancid scent on pillows and blankets.

In spite of the large money they received, especially at this season of the year for wool, sheepmen were stingy spenders. Luxury was unknown to them; the refinements, even the comforts, of life were largely despised. Due to this the hotel rate was not high. Rawlins installed himself in a wool-tainted room to wait the outcome of his investigation.

In the course of three weeks, after a telegram had been shot in to kick him along, the congressman's reply to the land-seeking wanderer's letter came. It was a long letter, full of political subtleties, insincerities, evasions; but it settled the doubt, if there had been any doubt in Rawlins' mind to be settled, concerning the legality of sheep limit at the edge of the Dry Wood country.

As far as he could find out from the Department, as far as the records showed, Senator Galloway had no lease covering the public lands in question, the congressman wrote. But why should he have a lease to something nobody ever had wanted, or ever would want? What was all this trouble and inquiry over, anyway? Rawlins knew how such things went. It might be called one of the pleasant perquisites of senatorial eminence, one of the outside emoluments of political service. Wasn't there land enough lying

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 around unfenced in that State to give everybody a whack? What was the sense in kicking up a fuss over this particular piece?

Maybe a few covetous sheepmen wanted to get in on that land, which was no better and no worse, as far as the congressman could learn, than millions of acres open to anybody who came along. Nobody else ever had raised a complaint about it, and the general reputation of sheepmen in Washington did not place them above hogging on their own account when opportunity offered.

Let it be as it might, it was one of those things you could not do anything about. Senator Galloway had the confidence of the people in his State; they were not making any row about his fence. Just accept it as it was, and turn somewhere else for a homestead, if he wanted to take one up in that country, which was a desire in any sane man that passed the understanding of the Kansas congressman, indeed.

Rawlins was not inexperienced in such matters the congressman said; it was not the same as talking to one of the voters at home. Drop it; let it pass. He might as well try to break into the Treasury building at Washington as to pry Galloway's cinch loose on that land.

And so on. Plenty of advice, all manner of political excusing, justifying, side-stepping. But not a word of encouragement, not an offer of help. Galloway was a high man; he stood in with the Secretary of the Interior, he had a baling-wire tie with the President. Right or wrong—not admitting for a moment that there was any injustice or wrong in the fence—it was

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 a situation that would pay an outsider to keep his hands off. Come back to God's country if he wanted land; come back to Kansas, where human life averaged five years longer than anywhere else, and the climate beat Italy and California so far you couldn't even see its dust.

All of which did not alter Rawlins' designs on Senator Galloway's fenced lands in the least. He had come to Dry Wood with his plans arranged, the very base of them being a homestead on some creek in that white place on the map. Exploration had revealed to him that Galloway had appropriated to his own use the best land in the Dry Wood section.

There were thousands of acres of agricultural land, watered by numerous streams, lying inside the fence not more than four miles from sheep limit. A half-section of that land belonged to him, under the semi-arid homestead provisions, his birthright as an American citizen, and he was going in there to take it.

Galloway might be a big man in the affairs of that State, but he was nothing in Rawlins' scheme. Galloway had not been there, designated and set down on the map, when that scheme was drawn. With the Government behind him to uphold and defend him in his rights, Rawlins the homesteader would be bigger than Galloway the usurper.

Galloway had put a personal affront upon him by building that fence; the injustice of it bore directly on him, the oppression was his load. His life had been shaping for a long time, in toil and hope and far-projected intention, towards that white spot on the map. The more he thought of it the hotter his resent-

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 ment rose. That was his land; nobody had a right to fence him out of it.

Rawlins put the congressman's letter in his pocket, thinking it would be worth saving as an example of political insincerity. The registrar in the land-office looked at him queerly when Rawlins identified on the map the parcel of land he wanted, and paid the entry fee, taking in return the preliminary papers which put the United States Government back of him to warrant and defend him in his rights.

Within an hour he had Graball out of the livery barn, a little of something in the corner of a sack to sustain both of them on the way, and had turned his face towards the Dry Wood range, where the guarded fence stretched league upon league, barring the homeless from their inheritance and their rights.

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do not always hold in the sheeplands. It is a country, indeed, where it might be said, as of other climes in time of dry weather, all signs fail. One must even beware of those soft white cumuli such as the so-called old masters used to put into their pictures for gross, fat, pigeon-winged cherubim to loll upon. In other summerlands these white mountain-peaks and shaded vales of clouds are assurance of fair weather; in the sheeplands they cannot be trusted to carry on as they appear.

Almost while one's back is turned these cherubim beds sometimes mass and grow dark over the far-off hills, forming stormlets which appear not much wider than one's dooryard. These little strips of storm come bearing down across the sheeplands, blustering furiously, pouring rain as if the bung at headquarters were out above the small brush-strokes of dark cloud. Half a mile wide, perhaps, or a mile, they drench the grey sheeplands, bright sun shining on either side, frequently sending torrents of brown water rolling down dry canyons, holding up sheepmen in their Fords on their dust-dry banks for an hour or two until the freshet subsides.

Such a rain as this overtook Rawlins on his way back to Dry Wood, driving him to the shelter of the road

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 ranch which featured in a broad sign its well-appointed bar. Night was drawing in when he rode into the fenced enclosure; the first big splashing drops of the shower were knocking up dust in the corral like spent bullets as he led Graball under the shed. Man and horse were both well content to call it a day and try the comforts of the wayside rest.

A man named Lineberger was running the place, assisted by his wife and daughter. Lineberger appeared to be a cattleman out of place. He was a scragged tall man, taciturn, gloomy of countenance, grudging and ungracious in his speech, for which deficiency his wife made ample amends. This was a stubby, quick woman, red, raucous, full of loud laughter which spilled over every time she tipped. Her eyes were alert, eager, and nothing so friendly as her words. Her husband called her Dell.

The daughter seemed indifferent, of herself as well as of those who came and went. She was a longbacked, flat, moping young woman with a scant wisp of dusty hair, looking rather lachrymose about the nose, keeping her eyes downcast as if she had been warned against the wickedness of horseback-going men. Her mother called her Nadine, with a lingering fondness for the name.

Lineberger's was an old ranch-house transformed into a wayside inn. Whether the present owner had degenerated with the house into that business, Rawlins only speculated; he did not have the courage, before the host's formidable countenance, to inquire. The house was built of hewn logs, long L-shaped, with diminishing additions upon the foot of it which ter-

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 minated in the kitchen, where an astonishingly tall projected from the comb.

On the front ridgepole a broad-spreading pair of elk antlers rode, a sign once as familiar over the doors of refreshment places in the inter-mountain country as the polished steer horns were in mid-western saloons. Dispensers of ardent liquors always have appeared to be peculiarly attached to horns.

Business was dull at the road-ranch that evening; there was not a horse but Graball under the long shed; no guest but his master in the bar. The rain had come with furious outburst, lashing the windows with streams, the young quaking-asp trees set in front of the house bending like bows before the wind. By the time Rawlins' supper had been thrown together by the hostess and his plate and cutlery laid out by Nadine on one end of the long table, the vicious burst off storm had passed.

This table shared the main room of the establishment with the well-appointed bar, the visible appointments of which were seven bottles of varying size and color, one lemon, and a pistol. The bar, being the institution first under requisition by visitors, and last in the thoughts and desires of departing guests, was near the door, a long stretch of floor between it and the dining-table. In this intervening space were chairs and round-topped card tables, a square in the center marking where the stove, lately removed, had stood. The room was lighted lugubriously by a lamp swinging from the ceiling.

Rawlins was just putting his feet under the table when somebody rode into the yard, calling the host out

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 with a halloo before the door. Lineberger went to answer the summons, returning presently with a long streak of a man who was dripping from the corners of his brown duck coat like a leaky keg.

This traveler who came at the tail of the storm had the lines of familiarity to Rawlins' eyes, though his features were obscured by the shadow of his hat, which seemed the very exaggeration of Texas hats, the crown of it twisted into a peculiar peak. The traveler had jammed the hat down to his ears, leaving little of his features visible, and that little insignificant and shadowy in the dim lamplight.

But what little of him there was visible under the remarkable hat was enough to identify the man as the notable Dowell Peck, late of St. Joe. If there had been any doubt in the case Peck's first word dispelled it. He said he was cold to the gizzard and wanted a spike of something fiery, facing to the bar, taking both hands to his hat as he had the day he arrived with Smith Phogenphole from Lost Cabin.

Peck stood slinging water from the brim of this romantic hat, inquiring about a change of clothing. The landlord said he didn't think there was anything around the place long and narrow enough to fit him, unless it might be a, his sarcasm far in excess of his hospitality, knowing very well that guests must bear with one to enjoy the comforts of the other, there being no competition within eighty miles on either side.

A pair of overalls and a shirt would hold him, Peck said, until he had forked some supper into him, when he intended to go to bed. No, there wasn't anything available, Lineberger replied, sulky and contemptuous

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 of his guest's demands. That was a road-ranch, not a clothing-store. He'd have to keep his duds on till they dried, or go to bed and hang them on a chair.

"All right," said Peck, with a sneer for the accommodations of that joint which matched pretty well Lineberger's best. He put his hat on his peaked head to show his indifference, if not his scorn, for the crudities of the place and the people in it, turning toward the table.

"Why, hello, Rawlins," he hailed, with a sort of hearty surprise. He came striding over, offering his hand with more affability than condescension. "I thought you'd left this daddled country; I thought you was where you was hearin' street-car bells by now."

"I'm just coming back," Rawlins told him. "Won't you sit in?"

Peck would, and did. Nadine came, her discreet gaze on the floor, carrying them biscuits, ham, eggs; turgid coffee, milk in a tin to go with it; portions of cottage pudding dampened down in a sad grey sauce. She laid it out indifferently all at one operation, as if to say there it was; they could take it or leave it, either course being equally acceptable to her.

"Just comin' back, heh?" said Peck. He turned the ham critically with his fork, looking out the largest and most likely piece. "I don't see what anybody wants to come back to this country for when he can go the other way."

Rawlins was not inclined to allay the curiosity in Peck's bulging eyes. While he never had felt a shadow of animosity for the man, he wondered how Peck had put aside and forgotten so entirely his own rancor.

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 Perhaps that little splurge at the exercise of his new authority when he had discharged Rawlins had mollified him. Whatever the reason, he seemed now to accept Rawlins as an equal and a friend.

"How are things on the ranch?" Rawlins inquired, just a bit curious to know what business had brought Peck so far from the bosom of his wife.

"You can have it; you can put that sheep business in your hat and take it away with you," Peck replied, somewhat too intense and heated, Rawlins thought, for a man newly-married to a fortune.

"No?" said Rawlins, with amused depreciation. "What's up?"

"I am—up and a-goin'," Peck replied.

"Going? Going where?"

"Let me tell you," Peck proposed, his knife in his big fist, dribbling egg down the blade. "I thought I was marryin' a woman, but I wasn't. I wasn't marryin' nothing but a crowd of sheep. Take it from me, Rawlins: don't marry no woman that's got sheep on the brain. They ain't got no room in their hearts, no, nor even their houses, for no man. Let 'em alone. Walk away from 'em and let 'em alone."

"What's happened? Won't she come across with the money?"

"You said it," Peck nodded fervently. "Tight ain't no name for that woman. One of them iron barrels they ship gasoline in's wide open compared to her. She married me to save a hired man; that was her game, but she figgered on the wrong side of the door. She don't seem to know I ain't the kind of a man a woman can put a fence around and show him off like

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 a giraft. I can make my little old thirty a week, any day. I ain't no woman's married hired-hand."

"Well, I should hope not," Rawlins encouraged him.

He wondered how far Peck's rebellion had gone, or how far it would go, with little faith in its force or ultimate success.

"She put me out there with that old Mexican feller to learn the game, goin' to make a sheepwoman's man out of me, she said. I've been out there with that old squint-eyed Indian ever since you left, and I ain't heard eight words out of him all that time. That man talks with his eyebrows; he sics his dog on them dan sheep with his hands."

"You don't take to the sheep business, then?"

"Take to it? I should say I don't! That ain't no life for a man, settin' around on a hill watchin' a gang of sheep. I'd ruther pump air in the hot place at two cents a jerk."

"She'll be cashin' in on her sheep one of these days; then you'll come into your own, Peck. She'll have a roll of money as big as a barrel. You can take her back to St. Joe, build a house with a cupola on it like a courthouse and sit on the front porch in your slippers, with nothing to do the rest of your life but figure the interest."

"It listens fine!" said Peck, making a sniffing of disdain. "Any time you see that woman leavin' this country you'll see her goin' to buy some dan fool buck for a thousand dollars, or a bunch of ewes—I call 'em stews, makes her hoppin'—guaranteed to shear nine pounds of wool a year. It ain't for me, this here life. I'd ruther have my little old thirty a week and be back

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 where I can hear the girls' heels knock the sidewalk. I'm done; my experimentin' with these here sheep-ranch women's over. You can tell her you saw me, and I was on my way."

"But you don't mean you're quitting her, Peck?"

"Cold. I'm quittin' her cold."

"What do you suppose she'll say?"

"Plenty," said Peck, with deep conviction. "Let her rair, it'll do her good. She'll think double next time before she deceives any stranger into marryin' her. Say, Rawlins; you remember that bundle of money Tippie brought her the day I hit the ranch?"

"Sure I remember it."

"So do I," said Peck, sadly. "And that's all I've got of it—a remembrance. I ain't never seen the color of that long-green since; I never would if I hung around there the rest of my life. What's the use of bein' a husband to a woman and a stranger to her money? That's what I say. I'd ruther punch transfers on the end of a street-car in St. Joe."

"So you're on your way. Well, I thought you had more nerve than that, Peck. I never took you for a quitter. In fact, Tippie and I thought you'd be about as hard to lose as a tick."

"You see me," said Peck, significantly. "I didn't tell that old Chinaman anything about my scheme, I just throwed a saddle on my horse—her horse, I don't even own its snort—and headed south, trustin' to luck to hit the railroad."

"When was that?"

"This morning while that old Dago feller was wakin' up the sheep. He won't miss me before a couple of

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