folks think they're range broke."

"And yet you're wasting time in this tame little granger wart on the
map!"

"No, not wasting time," smiled Luck serenely. "A little old trunk-juggler
up the trail told me about the Flying U outfit that is still sending
their wagons out when the grass gets green. I stopped off to give the
high-sign to the boys, and say howdy, and swap yarns, and maybe haze some
of 'em gently into camp. I wanted to see if the Flying U has got any real
ones left."

Andy Green looked eloquently at the Native Son. "Now, what do you know
about that, Mig?" he breathed softly behind a mouthful of smoke. "Wanting
to rope him out a few from the Flying U bunch. Say! Have you got a real
puncher amongst that outfit of long-haired hayseeds?"

The Native Son shook his head negligently and gave Luck a velvet-eyed
glance of friendly pity.

"If there is, he's ranging deep in the breaks and never shows up at
shipping time," he averred. "I've never seen one myself. They've got one
that--what would you call Big Medicine, if you wanted to name him quick
and easy, Andy?"

Andy frowned. "What I'd call him had best not be named in this
God-fearing little hamlet," he responded gloomily. "I sure would never
name him in the day I talked about cow-punchers that's ever dug sand outa
their eyes on trail-herd."

The Native Son, still with the velvet-eyed look of pity, turned to Luck.
"Andy's right," he sighed. "They've got one that takes spells of talking
deliriously about when he punched cows in Coconino County; but I guess
there's nothing to it."

"You say you was told that the Flying U outfit has got some real ones?"
Andy eyed Luck curiously and with some of the Native Son's pity. "Just in
a general way, what happens to folks that lie to you deliberate, when you
meet 'em again? I'd like," he added, "to know about how sorry to feel for
that baggage humper when you see him--after meeting the Flying U bunch."

The soul of Luck Lindsay was singing an impromptu doxology, but the face
of him--so well was that face trained to do his bidding--became tinged
with disgust and disappointment. With two "real boys" he was talking; he
knew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor with
which they lied to him about themselves. But not so much as a gleam of
the eye betrayed to them that he knew.

"So that's why he went off grinning so wide," he mused aloud. "I was sure
caught then with my gun at home on the piano