thin a hundred miles starts to resenting the
possibility that maybe the albino feels the same way toward him.
Harper knows that."

"But if your theory had been wrong?" she persisted. "What then?"

"Then," he said, "then there'd have been hell and repeat. I wasn't
just acting as me, a personal affair, but, as I took pains to remark
aloud, as the foreman of the Three Bar. Every Three Bar man would have
gone into action the second Harper made a move at me. You know
that--and Harper knew it."

She realized the soundness of this statement. The one unalterable code
of the country, a code that had been fostered till it eclipsed all
others, decreed that a man should be loyal to the brand for which he
rode. The whole fabric of the cow business was based on that one point.

"And a wrangle of that magnitude was something he couldn't risk,"
Harris said. "It would stir folks up, and any time they're stirred a
mite too far Harper has come to the end of his rope. Any other brand
could have done the same--only folks fall into a set habit of mind and
figure they must do what others do just because it's custom."

"But now they'll work their deviltry all the stronger against the Three
Bar," she predicted. "They could wreck us if they tried. You couldn't
get a conviction in five years. Not a man would testify against one of
Harper's outfit."

"Then we'll put on a fighting crew and hold them off," he said. "But
that's not the layout that will be hardest to handle in the long run.
Slade is the one real hard nut for the Three Bar to crack. He can work
it a dozen different ways and you couldn't prove one of them on him to
save your soul. He's one smooth hombre--Slade."

Harris rose and headed for his bed roll and the girl sought the shelter
of her teepee for a rest. All was quiet near the wagon till Waddles
boomed the summons to feed. After the meal a youth named Moore mounted
a saddled horse that was picketed nearby and rode up a branching gulch,
returning with a dry cedar log which he snaked to the wagon at the end
of his rope. After a few hours' rest and the prospects of a full
night's sleep ahead the hands snatched an hour for play.

They sat cross-legged round the fire kindled from the cedar and raised
their voices in song. Waddles drew forth a guitar and picked a few
chords. Bentley, the man who repped for Slade, carried the air and the
rest joined in. The voices were untrained but from long experience in
ren