riday. Conniston determined to work Saturday. Then
he would have Sunday for rest. And when Sunday afternoon came he could
quit if he felt that his aching body had not recuperated enough to
make the following week bearable. But he had yet to learn that in the
rush of busy days on the range there is no Sunday. For Sunday morning
came and brought no opportunity to sleep until noon. Breakfast was
ready at the usual dim hour, and the men went to work as they had on
every day since he came to the Half Moon. They knew what he did not,
that for many weeks to come they might have no single day off. And
they understood, and did not complain.

Brayley stopped him that morning as he was going out of the bunk-house
door with Lonesome Pete.

"We got something else to do besides tinker with ol' fences," he said,
roughly. "Pete, you got to git along alone to-day. I'll give you a man
to-morrow if I can spare one. Conniston, you git your hoss an' go with
Rawhide an' Toothy."

Not stopping for an answer, Brayley lurched away toward the
range-house. Lonesome Pete, nodding his red head to show that he had
heard, filled his water-bottle and got the lunch the cook had ready
for him. And Conniston, wondering vaguely what work the Sunday was to
bring for him, turned silently and followed Rawhide and the man whom
they called Toothy to the stables.

Toothy was a little man, so stubborn, they said, that he even refused
to let the sun brown his skin. Instead of being the coppery hue of his
companions, the parchment-like stuff drawn tight over his high
cheek-bones was a dirty yellow. His eyes were small, set close
together, and squinted eternally in a sort of mirthless grin. His
teeth, which had given him his name, were the most conspicuous of his
odd features. The two front incisors of his upper jaw protruded
outward so as to close when his mouth was shut--and generally it
wasn't--over his lower lip. He was the smallest man on the range and
by long odds the ugliest. But he could ride!

Conniston was sorry to be separated from Lonesome Pete, the only man
of the outfit with whom he spoke a dozen words a day, the only man who
did not treat him as a rank outsider and an alien. But, on the other
hand, he was glad that he was to be given a respite from the
blistering wires of the cross-fence, that he was to be given change of
work. And when he learned what the work was he was doubly glad. The
three men were to ride twenty miles from the bunk-house