lers, every muddy-bellied wolf of 'em, and we can prove
it--and pass 'em by. They come and go here like white men, and nothing
said. Keep clear of the reservation; that's all you've got to do to be
as safe as if you was layin' in bed on your ranch up in Jackson's
Hole."

Chadron winked as he named that refuge of the hunted in the Northwest.
Mark appeared to be considering something weightily.

"Oh, well, if they're rustlers--nobody ain't got no use for a
rustler," he said.

"There's men in that bunch of twenty"--tapping the slip of paper with
his finger--"that started with two cows a couple of years ago that's
got fifty and sixty head of two-year-olds now," Chadron feelingly
declared.

"How much're you willin' to go?" Mark put the question with a
suddenness which seemed to betray that he had been saving it to shoot
off that way, as a disagreeable point over which he expected a
quarrel. He squinted his draggled left eye at Chadron, as if he was
taking aim, while he waited for a reply.

"Well, you have done it for fifty a head," Chadron said.

"Things is higher now, and I'm older, and the resk's bigger," Mark
complained. "How fur apart do they lay?"

"You ought to get around in a week or two."

"But that ain't figgerin' the time a feller has to lay out in the
bresh waitin' and takin' rheumatiz in his j'ints. I couldn't touch the
job for the old figger; things is higher."

"Look here, Mark"--Chadron opened the slip which he had wound round
his finger--"this one is worth ten, yes, all, the others. Make your
own price on him. But I want it _done_; no bungled job."

Mark took the paper and laid his pipe aside while he studied it.

"Macdonald?"

"Alan Macdonald," nodded Chadron. "That feller's opened a ditch from
the river up there on my land and begun to _irrigate!_"

"Irrigatin', huh?" said Mark, abstractedly, moving his finger down the
column of names.

"He makes a blind of buyin' up cattle and fattenin' 'em on the hay and
alfalfer he's raisin' up there on my good land, but he's the king-pin
of the rustlers in this corner of the state. He'll be in here tomorrow
with cattle for the Indian agent--it's beef day--and you can size him
up. But you've got to keep your belly to the ground like a snake when
you start anything on that feller, and you've got to make sure you've
got him dead to rights. He's quick with a gun, and he's sure."

"Five hundred?" suggested Mark, with a crafty sidelong look.

"You've name