dering every song each man carried his part without a discordant
note. Evans sang a perfect bass. Bangs a clear tenor; Moore faked a
baritone that satisfied all hands and Waddles wagged his head in unison
with the picking of his guitar and hummed, occasionally accenting the
air with a musical, drumlike boom. They rambled through all the old
familiar songs of the range. The Texan herded his little dogie from
the Staked Plains to Abilene; the herd was soothed on the old bed
ground--bed down my dogie, bed down--and the poor cowboy was many times
buried far out on the lone prair-ee.

Bangs had stationed himself so that he could see the girl and
throughout the evening his surprised eyes never once strayed from
Billie Warren's face.

She leaned back against the wagon wheel, enjoying it all, but her
complacence was jarred as she half-turned and noted Morrow's face,
drawn and bleak, unsoftened by the music. Again the feeling of dislike
for him rose within her; but he was an efficient hand and she had
nothing definite against him. At the end of an hour Waddles rose and
returned his instrument to the wagon. The group broke up and every man
turned in.

Billie Warren lay in her teepee, her mind busily going over the events
of the day. The night sounds of the range drifted to her. A bull-bat
rasped a note or two from above. A picketed horse stamped restlessly
just outside and a range cow bawled from an adjacent slope. The
night-hawk had relieved the wrangler and she could half-hear, half-feel
the low jar of many hoofs as he grazed the remuda slowly up the valley,
singing to while away the time.

She reflected that Cal Harris was at least possessed of self-confidence
and that procrastination was certainly not to be numbered among his
failings. It came to her that his interests, for the present, were
identical with her own. As half-owner in the Three Bar it would be as
much to his advantage as to her own to build it up. Waddles's warped
legs prevented his acting as foreman on the job and it might be that
the other man would find some way to prevent the leak that was sapping
the life from the Three Bar. His half-ownership entitled him to the
place. Billie Warren loved her brand and her personal distrust of
Harris was submerged in the hope that his sharing the full
responsibility with herself might be a step toward putting it back on
the old-time plane of prosperity.

The jar of hoofs had ceased and she knew that t