p away from pool rooms, Bud.
Somebody is liable to take your head off and use it for a cue-ball.
_Vollup! Hunh!_"

Bud said more; a great deal more. But Johnny flopped over on the
other side, buried his head under the blankets, and let them talk.
Cue-balls--that was all their heads were good for. So why concern
himself over their senseless patter?

It occurred to him, just before he went to sleep, that the unmistakable,
southern drawl of Tex was missing from the jumble of voices. Tex, he
remembered, had been unusually silent at supper, also, and twice Johnny
had caught Tex watching him somberly. But he could think of no possible
reason why Tex should want him to go down to Sinkhole Camp, and he could
not see how either of them could effect the change even if Johnny had
cared to go. Sudden Selmer did not ask his men what was their desire.
Sudden gave orders; his men could obey or they could quit. And if Pete
left, as Tex had hinted, Sudden would send some one down there, and that
would be an end of it. There was just about one chance in six that Johnny
Jewel would be the man to go.

Yet it so happened that Johnny did go--though Tex had nothing to do with
it, so far as Johnny could see. For all his determination to stay and
tolerate his companions, noon found him packed and out by the gate that
opened on the stage road, waiting to flag the stage and buy a ride to
town. He had accomplished, since breakfast, two fights and another
quarrel with Mary V over that infernal jingle he had written. And though
Johnny could not see it, Tex had had something to do with them all.

Tex was not one of these diabolically cunning villains. He did not
consider himself any kind of a villain. He accepted himself more or less
contentedly as a poor, striving young man who wanted to get ahead in the
world and was eager to pick up what he called "side money," which might,
if he were on to his job, amount to more than his wages. Tex did not
consider that he owed the Rolling R anything whatever save a certain
number of days' work in each month that he drew a pay check. He sold
Sudden his time and his skill in the saddle--a month of it for fifty
dollars. But if he could double that fifty without harm to himself, Tex
was not going to split any hairs over the method.

Tex was not displaying any great genius when he edged the boys on to
tease Johnny beyond the limit of that young man's endurance, or when he
tattled to Mary V a slighting remark ab