econds at a time, or
you'll get the flies in it, an'--they'll start nestin'."

Then without pause he turned on Sunny and delivered his ultimatum.

"Get busy," he ordered in a tone there was no denying.

And somehow Sunny found himself stirring far more rapidly than suited
his indolent disposition.

Having thoroughly disturbed the atmosphere to his liking, Bill left
the veranda without another look in his companions' direction, and his
way took him to the barn at the back of the store.

The gambler was a man of so many and diverse peculiarities that it
would be an impossibility to catalogue them with any degree of
satisfactoriness. But, with the exception of his wholesale piratical
methods at cards--indeed, at any kind of gambling--perhaps his most
striking feature was his almost idolatrous worship for his horses. He
simply lived for their well-being, and their evident affection for
himself was something that he treasured far beyond the gold he so
loved to take from his opponents in a gamble.

He possessed six of these horses, each in its way a jewel in the
equine crown. Wherever the vagaries of his gambler's life took him his
horses bore him thither, harnessed to a light spring cart of the
speediest type. Each animal had cost him a small fortune, as the price
of horses goes, and for breed and capacity, both in harness and under
saddle, it would have been difficult to find their match anywhere in
the State of Montana. He had broken and trained them himself in
everything, and, wherever he was, whatever other claims there might be
upon him, morning, noon and evening he was at the service of his
charges. He gloried in them. He reveled in their satin coats, their
well-nourished, muscular bodies, in their affection for himself.

Now he sat on an oat-bin contemplating Gipsy's empty stall, with a
regret that took in him the form of fierce anger. It was the first
time since she had come into his possession that she had been turned
over to another, the first time another leg than his own had been
thrown across her; and he mutely upbraided himself for his folly, and
hated Scipio for having accepted her services. Why, he asked himself
again and again, had he been such an unearthly fool? Then through his
mind flashed a string of blasphemous invective against James, and with
its coming his regret at having lent Gipsy lessened.

He sat for a long time steadily chewing his tobacco. And somehow
he lost all desire to continue hi