hat d'you want me to do?"

"Fire him--run him off Dry Mesa," snapped Gowan.

"Sorry I can't oblige you, Kid," replied Knowles. "You mean well, but
you'll have to make a better showing before I'll turn adrift any man
that seems to be trying to make good."

Gowan looked down. After a brief pause he replied with unexpected
submissiveness: "All right, Mr. Knowles. You're the boss. Reckon you
know best. I don't savvy these city folks."

"Glad you admit it," said Knowles. "You're all wrong in sizing him up
that way. I've a notion he's got a lot of good in him, spite of his
city rearing. I wouldn't object, though, if you wanted to test him out
with a little harmless hazing, long as you didn't go too far."

"No," declined Gowan. "I've got my own notion of what he is. There's
just one way to deal with skunks, and that is, don't fool with them."

The cowman accepted this as conclusive. But when, a little later,
Ashton met Gowan at the supper table he was rendered uneasy by the
cold glint in the puncher's gray eyes. As nothing was said about the
postmaster's receipt, he could conjecture no reason for the look other
than that Gowan was planning to render him ridiculous with some cowboy
trick.

Isobel had assured him with utmost confidence that the testing of his
horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical
joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse
had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next
undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and
consequently all the more humiliating unless evaded.

In apprehension of this, the tenderfoot lay awake most of that night
and fully half of the next. His watch was fruitless. Each night Gowan
and the other men left him strictly alone in his far dark corner of
the bunkhouse. In the daytime the puncher was studiously polite to him
during the few hours that he was not off on the range.

The third evening, after supper, Gowan handed Isobel the horny,
half-flattened rattles of an unusually large rattlesnake.

"What is it? Do you wish me to guess his length?" she asked, evidently
surprised that he should fetch her so commonplace an object. "I make
it four feet."

"You're three inches short," he replied.

"Well, what about it?" she inquired.

"Nothing--only I just happened to get him up near the bunkhouse, Miss
Chuckie. Thought I'd tell you, in case he has a mate around."

"We must all look sharp. You,