fer you've made me! They
would, that's a fact. They'd laugh at you. You're all right, Ches, but I
won't stand for a deal like that. I can't make good."

Mason waited until he was through. Then he came closer and put both
hands on Ford's shoulders, so that they stood face to face, and he
looked straight into Ford's discolored eyes with his own shining a
little behind their encircling wrinkles.

"You can make good!" he said calmly. "I know it. All you need is a
chance to pull up. Seeing you won't give yourself one, I'm giving it to
you. You'll do for me what you won't do for yourself, Ford--and if
there's a yellow streak in you, I never got a glimpse of it; and the
yellow will sure come to the surface of a man when he's bucking a
proposition like you and me bucked for two months. You didn't lay down
on that job, and you were just a kid, you might say. Gosh, Ford, I'd
bank on you any old time--put you on your mettle, and I would! You can
make good here--and damn it, you will!"

"I wish I was as sure of that as you seem to be," Ford muttered
uneasily, and turned away. Mason's easy chuckle followed him, and Ford
swung about and faced him again.

"I haven't made any cast-iron promise--"

"Did I ask you to make any?" Mason's voice sharpened.

"But--Lordy me, Ches! How do you know I--"

"I know. That's enough."

"But--maybe I don't want the darned job. I never said--"

Mason was studying him, as a man studies the moods of an untamed horse.
"I didn't think you'd dodge," he drawled, and the blood surged
answeringly to Ford's cheeks. "You do want it."

"If I should happen to get jagged up in good shape, about the first
thing I'd do would be to lick the stuffing out of you for being such a
simple-minded cuss," Ford prophesied grimly, as one who knows well
whereof he speaks.

"Ye-es--but you won't get jagged."

"Oh, Lord! I wish you'd quit believing in me! You used to have some
sense," Ford grumbled. But he reached out and clenched his fingers upon
Mason's arm so tight that Mason set his teeth, and he looked at him
long, as if there was much that he would like to put into words and
could not. "Say! You're white clear down to your toes, Ches," he said
finally, and walked away hurriedly with his hat jerked low over his
eyes.

Mason looked after him as long as he was in sight, and afterwards took
off his hat, and wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. "Gosh!"
he whispered fervently. "That was nip and tuck--but