ng home, Tony said to our _segundo_ and myself;--

"Then I'll depend on you two, and I may have a few other friends who
will want to attend. I don't need very many for a coward like Jack
Oxenford. He is perfectly capable of abusing an unprotected woman, or an
old man if he had a crowd of friends behind to sick him on. Oh, he's a
cur all right; for when I told him that he was whelped under a house, he
never resented it. He loves me all right, or has good cause to. Why, I
bent the cylinder pin of a new six-shooter over his head when he had a
gun on him, and he forgot to use it. I don't expect any trouble, but if
you don't look a sneaking cur right in the eye, he may slip up behind
and bite you."

After making arrangements to turn in two hundred beeves on our second
contingent, and send a man with them to the coast, Hunter returned home.
There was no special programme for the interim until gathering the
beeves commenced, yet on a big ranch like Las Palomas there is always
work. While Deweese finished curbing the well in which Ortez lost
his life, I sawed off and cut new threads on all the rods and piping
belonging to that particular windmill. With a tireless energy for one
of his years, Uncle Lance rode the range, until he could have told at
a distance one half his holdings of cattle by flesh marks alone. A few
days before the date set for the trial, Enrique brought in word one
evening that an outfit of strange men were encamped north of the river
on the Ganso Tract. The vaquero was unable to make out their business,
but was satisfied they were not there for pleasure, so my employer and I
made an early start the next morning to see who the campers were. On the
extreme northwestern corner of our range, fully twenty-five miles from
headquarters, we met them and found they were a corps of engineers,
running a preliminary survey for a railroad. They were in the employ
of the International and Great Northern Company, which was then
contemplating extending their line to some point on the Rio Grande.
While there was nothing definite in this prior survey, it sounded a note
of warning; for the course they were running would carry the line up the
Ganso on the south side of the river, passing between the new tanks, and
leaving our range through a sag in the hills on the south end of the
grant. The engineer in charge very courteously informed my employer that
he was under instructions to run, from San Antonio to different points
on t