d up.

"Meet Jimmie Thursday, Billie," the old-timer said by way of
introduction. "This boy says there's heap many Injuns on the war-path
right ahead of us. I reckon I'll let you take the point while I ride
back with him an' put it up to the old man."

The "old man" turned out to be a short, heavy-set Missourian who had
served in the Union Army and won a commission by intelligence and
courage. Wherever the name of Homer Webb was known it stood for integrity
and square-dealing. His word was as good as a signed bond.

Webb had come out of the war without a cent, but with a very definite
purpose. During the last year of the Confederacy, while it was tottering
to its fall, he had served in Texas. The cattle on the range had for
years been running wild, the owners and herdsmen being absent with the
Southern army. They had multiplied prodigiously, so that many thousands
of mavericks roamed without brand, the property of any one who would
round them up and put an iron on their flanks. The money value of them
was very little. A standard price for a yearling was a plug of tobacco.
But Webb looked to the future. He hired two riders, gathered together a
small remuda of culls, and went into the cattle business with energy.
To-day the Flying V Y was stamped on forty thousand longhorns.

The foreman of the Flying V Y was riding with the owner of the brand at
the drag end of the herd. He was a hard-faced citizen known as Joe
Yankie. When Wrayburn had finished his story, the foreman showed a row of
tobacco-stained teeth in an unpleasant grin.

"Same old stuff, Dad. There always is a bunch of bucks off the
reservation an' they're always just goin' to run our cattle away. If you
ask me there's nothin' to it."

Young Thursday flushed. "If you'll ride out with me I'll show you their
trail."

Yankie looked at him with a sneer. He guessed this boy to be about
eighteen. There was a suggestion of effeminacy about the lad's small,
well-shaped hands and feet. He was a slender, smooth-faced youth with
mild blue eyes. It occurred to Webb, too, that the stranger might have
imagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe grace
of the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge men
and he was not convinced that this young fellow was as inoffensive as he
looked.

"Where you from?" asked the drover.

"From the San Carlos Agency."

"Ever meet a man named Micky Free out there?"

"I've slept under the same