epee sides. Harris brought the girl's bed roll and war bag from the
wagon and placed them inside.

"There's your house," he said. "All ready to move in."

The men repaired to the creek bank and splashed faces and hands. The
big voice of the cook bellowed angrily from the wagon.

"Downstream! Downstream!" he boomed. "Get below that water hole!"

Two men who had elected to perform their ablutions above the point from
which the culinary water supply was drawn moved hastily downstream.

It was not long before Waddles was dispensing nourishment from the
lowered tail-gate, ladling food and hot coffee into the plates and cups
which the men held out to him. They drew away and sat cross-legged on
the ground. The meal was almost finished when six horsemen rode down
the valley and pulled up before the wagon.

"What's the chance for scraps?" the leader asked.

"Step down," Waddles invited. "And throw a feed in you. She's still
a-steaming."

Four of the men differed in no material way from the Three Bar men in
appearance. The fifth was a ruffian with little forehead, a face of
gorilla cast, stamped with brute ferocity and small intelligence. The
last of the six was a striking figure, a big man with pure white hair
and brows, his pale eyes peering from a red face.

"The roasted albino is Harper, our leading bad man in these parts,"
Evans remarked to Harris. "And the human ape is Lang; Fisher, Coleman,
Barton and Canfield are the rest. Nice layout of murderers and such."

Harper's men ate unconcernedly, conscious that they were marked as men
who had violated every law on the calendar, but knowing also that no
man would take exceptions to their presence on that general ground
alone, and as they had neared the wagon each man had scanned the faces
of the round-up crew to make certain that there were none among them
who might bear some more specific and personal dislike.

The Three Bar men chatted and fraternized with them as they would have
done with the riders of any legitimate outfit. Harper praised the food
that Waddles tendered them.

Billie Warren forced a smile as she nodded to them, then moved off and
sat upon a rock some fifty yards from the wagon, despising the six men
who ate her fare and inwardly raging at the conditions which forced her
to extend the hospitality of the Three Bar to men of their breed
whenever they chanced by.

Harris strolled over and sat down facing her, sifting tobacco into a
br