ith--but now you can
consider yourself free of that. I believe you have hit the nail on the
head."

"Thanks, I believe I have," said Bud dryly, and a little while later they
separated for the night, but not before he had remarked:

"I think it would benefit all of us if you drilled some of that
common-sense into your father."

CHAPTER IV

THE SIX PISTOL SHOTS

The next morning, after breakfast, which shortly followed the rising of
the sun, Bissell called Bud Larkin aside just as that young man had headed
for the corral to rope and saddle Pinte.

Gone was any hint of the man of the night before. His red face was sober,
and his brown eyes looked into Bud's steel-gray ones with a piercing,
almost menacing, intensity.

"I hope any friend of Julie's will continue to be my friend," was all he
said, but the glance and manner attending this delicate hint left no doubt
as to his meaning. His whole attitude spelled "sheep!"

"That depends entirely upon you, Mr. Bissell," was Larkin's rejoinder.

The cowman turned away without any further words, and Bud continued on to
the corral. At the enclosure he found Stelton roping a wiry and vicious
calico pony, and when he had finally cinched the saddle on Pinte, he
turned to see Julie at his side.

"You had better invite me to ride a little way with you," she said,
laughing, "because I am coming anyhow."

"Bless you! What a treat!" cried Bud happily, and helped to cinch up the
calico, who squealed at every tug.

Stelton, his dark face flushed to the color of mahogany, sullenly left him
the privilege and walked away.

Presently they mounted, and Bud, with a loud "So-long" and a wave of the
hand to some of the punchers, turned south. Julie, loping beside him,
looked up curiously at this.

"I thought you were going north, Bud," she cried.

"Changed my plans overnight," he replied non-committally, and she did not
press the subject further, feeling, with a woman's intuition, that war was
in the air.

Ten miles south, at the ford of the southern branch of Grass Creek, she
drew up her horse as the signal for their separation, and faced north.
Bud, still headed southward, put Pinte alongside of her and took her
hand.

"It's been a blessing to see you, you're so civilized," she said,
half-seriously. "Do come again."

"Then you do sometimes miss the things you have been educated to?"

"Yes, Bud, I do, but not often. Seeing you has brought back a flood of
memories t