r one or the other as work pressed. He was
too erratic to be depended upon except from day to day; too prone to
saddle his horse and ride to town and forget to return for a day or two
days or a week, as the mood seized him or his money held out.

Lite knew that there had been some dispute when he had left; he had
claimed payment for more days than he had worked. Aleck was a just man
who paid honestly what he owed; he was also known to be "close-fisted."
He would pay what he owed and not a nickel more,--hence the dispute.
Johnny had gone away seeming satisfied that his own figures were wrong,
but later on he had quarreled with Carl over wages and other things.
Carl had a bad temper that sometimes got beyond his control, and he had
ordered Johnny off the ranch. This was part of the long, full-detailed
story Jim had been telling. Johnny had left, and he had talked about
the Douglas brothers to any one who would listen. He had said they
were crooked, both of them, and would cheat a working-man out of his
pay. He had come back, evidently, to renew the argument with Aleck.
With the easy ways of ranch people, he had gone inside when he found no
one at home,--hungry, probably, and not at all backward about helping
himself to whatever appealed to his appetite. That was Johnny's
way,--a way that went unquestioned, since he had lived there long
enough to feel at home. Lite remembered with an odd feeling of pity how
Johnny had praised the first gingerbread which Jean had baked, the day
after her arrival; and how he had eaten three pieces and had made
Jean's cheeks burn with confusion at his bold flattery.

He had come back, and he had helped himself to the gingerbread. And
then he had been shot down. He was lying in there now, just as he had
fallen, and his blood was staining deep the fresh-scrubbed floor. And
Jean would be coming home soon. Lite thought it would be better if he
rode out to meet her, and told her what had happened, so that she need
not come upon it unprepared. There was nothing else that he could
bring himself to do, and his mood demanded action of some sort; one
could not sit down at peace with a fresh tragedy like that hanging over
the place.

He had reached the stable when a horse walked out from behind the hay
corral and stopped, eyeing him curiously. It was Johnny's horse. Even
as improvident a cowpuncher as Johnny Croft had been likes to own a
"private" horse,--one that is his own and can be ri