unication with Bemis or Bud, or Mary Thorne, unless accompanied by
Lynch or one of his satellites. And the worst of it was he was quite
helpless. He was merely a common, ordinary hand, and at the first sign of
disobedience, or even evasion of orders, Lynch would have a perfectly good
excuse to discharge him--an excuse he was doubtless itching to create.

CHAPTER X

BUCK FINDS OUT SOMETHING

When the fact is chronicled that no less than three times in the
succeeding eight days Buck Stratton was strongly tempted to put an end to
the whole puzzling business by the simple expedient of declaring his
identity and taking possession of the Shoe-Bar as his own, something may
be guessed of the ingenuity of Tex Lynch in making life unpleasant for the
new hand.

Buck told himself more than once that if he had really been a new hand and
nothing more, he wouldn't have lasted forty-eight hours. Any
self-respecting cow-man would have promptly demanded his time and betaken
himself to another outfit, and Stratton sometimes wondered whether his
mere acceptance of the persecution might not rouse the foreman's suspicion
that he had motives for staying which did not appear on the surface.

He had to admit that Lynch's whole course of action was rather cleverly
worked out. It consisted mainly in giving Stratton the most difficult and
arduous work to do, and keeping him at it longer than anyone else, not
only on the round-up, but while driving the herd to Paloma Springs and
right up to the point where the steers were loaded on cattle-cars and the
job was over.

That, broadly speaking, was the scheme; but there were delicate touches of
refinement and ingenuity in the process which wrung from Stratton, in rare
intervals when he was not too furious to judge calmly, a grudging measure
of admiration for the wily foreman. Frequently, for instance, Stratton
would be assigned to night-herd duty with promise of relief at a certain
hour. Almost always that relief failed to materialize, and Buck, unable to
leave the herd, reeling with fatigue and cursing impotently, had to keep
at it till daybreak. The erring puncher generally had an excellent excuse,
which might have passed muster once, but which grew threadbare with
repetition.

Then, after an hour or two of sleep, the victim was more likely than not
to be dragged out of bed and ordered to take the place of Peters, Kreeger,
or one of the others, who had been sent to the ranch or elsewher