for word when the time
comes."

Slade favored him with a long stare which Lanky bore with unconcern,
smiling back at him pleasantly.

"I've got my little piece memorized," Evans said; "and in parting let
me remark that Cal Harris will prove a new sort of a victim for you to
work on. If you tie into him he'll tear down your meat-house." He
turned his horse and rode back to the herd.

"I'll play your own game," the girl told Slade. "If anything happens
to another man who is riding for me and I have any reason to even
suspect you were at the bottom of it I'll swear that I saw you do the
thing yourself. The Three Bar is the only outfit with a clean enough
record to drag anything up for an airing before the courts without
taking a chance. This rule of every man for himself won't hold good
with me."

She moved toward the wagon and Slade kept pace with her, leading his
horse. There was no sign of life around the wagon and the jerky
movement of a hat, barely visible through the tips of the sage,
indicated that Waddles was washing out some clothing at the creek bank
fifty yards away.

Slade leaned against the hind wheel on the far side from the herd and
looked down at her.

"You're a real woman, Billie," he said. "You better throw in with a
real man--me--and we'll own this country. I'll run the Three Bar on
ten thousand head whenever you say the word."

"I'd rather see it on half as many through my own efforts," she said.
"And some day I will."

"Some day you'll see it my way," he prophesied. "I know you better
than any other man. You want an outfit of your own--and if the Three
Bar gets crowded out you'll go to the man that can give you one in its
place. That will be me. Some day we'll trade."

"Some day--right soon--you'll trade your present holdings for a nice
little range in hell," a voice said in Slade's ear and at the same
instant two huge paws were thrust from the little window of the
cook-wagon and clamped on his arms above the crook of his elbows.
Slade was a powerful man but he was an infant in the grip of the two
great hands that raised him clear of the ground and shook him before he
was slammed down on his face ten feet away by a straight-arm thrust.
His deadly temper flared and the swift move for his gun was
simultaneous with the twist which brought him to his feet, but his hand
fell away from the butt of it as he looked into the twin muzzles of a
sawed-off shotgun which menaced him from th