ated in a negligent tone that belied his words.
"It's hard to tell just how it will pan out."

"Not so very hard--if you can read," the dark man contradicted.

The newcomer's gaze returned from down the valley and settled on
Morrow's face.

"Do you run a brand of your own--so's you'd stand to lose a dollar if
every foot of range was fenced?" he inquired.

"What are you trying to get at now?" Morrow demanded.

"Nothing much--now; I've already got," Harris said. "A man's interest
lays on the side where his finances are most concerned."

"What do you mean by that?" Morrow insisted.

"You're good at predicting--maybe you're an expert at guessing too,"
Harris returned. And suddenly Evans laughed as if something had just
occurred to him.

Morrow glanced at him without turning his head, then fell silent, his
expression unchanged.

A chunky youngster stood in the door and bent an approving gaze on the
big pinto as he swung out across the pasture lot. The boy's face was
small and quizzical, a shaggy mop of tawny hair hanging so low upon his
forehead that his mild blue eyes peered forth from under the fringe of
it and gave him the air of a surprised terrier, which effect had gained
him the title of Bangs.

"I bet the little paint-horse could make a man swing and rattle to set
up in his middle, once he started to act up," he said.

"Calico wouldn't know how to start," Harris said. "A horse, inside his
limitations, is what his breaker makes him. I never favored the idea
of breaking a horse to fight you every time you climb him. My horses
are gentle-broke."

"But you have to be able to top off just any kind of a horse," Bangs
objected.

"That don't hinder a man from gentling his own string," Harris returned.

Bangs turned his surprised eyes on Harris and regarded him intently as
if striving to fathom a viewpoint that was entirely new to him.

"Why, it don't, for a fact," he said at last. "Only I just never
happened to think of it like that before."

Morrow laughed and the boy flushed at the disagreeable ring of it. The
sound was not loud but flat and mirthless, the syllables distinct and
evenly spaced. His white even teeth remained tight-closed and showed
in flashing contrast to his swarthy face and black mustache. Morrow's
face wore none of the active malignancy that stamps the features of
those uncontrolled desperadoes who kill in a flare of passion; rather
it seemed that the urge to kill was always w