u'd git all the ridin' yuh want without prognosticatin' around
aimless."

Now Bud was not a suspicious young man, and he had been no more than
mildly inquisitive about that trail. But neither was he a fool; he
caught the emphasis which Dirk had placed on the word aimless, and his
thoughts paused and took another look at Dirk's whole conversation.
There was something queer about it, something which made Bud sheer off
from his usual unthinking assurance that things were just what they
seemed.

Immediately, however, he laughed--at himself as well as at Dirk.

"We've been feeding on sour bread and warmed-over coffee ever since the
cook disappeared and Bart put Hen in the kitchen," he said. "If I were
you, Dirk, I wouldn't blister my hands shovelling that grub into myself
for a while. You're bilious, old-timer. No man on earth would talk the
way you've been talking to-day unless his whole digestive apparatus were
out of order."

Dirk spat angrily at a dead sage bush. "They shore as hell wouldn't talk
the kinda talk you've been talkie' unless they was a born fool or else
huntin' trouble," he retorted venomously.

"The doctor said I'd be that way if I lived," Bud grinned, amiably,
although his face had flushed at Dirk's tone. "He said it wouldn't hurt
me for work."

"Yeah--and what kinda work?" Dirk rode so close that his horse
shouldered Bud's leg discomfortingly. "I been edgin' yuh along to see
what-f'r brand yuh carried. And I've got ye now, you damned snoopin'
kioty. Bart, he hired yuh to work-and not to go prowling around lookin'
up trails that ain't there--"

"You're a dim-brand reader, I don't think! Why you--!"

Oh, well--remember that Bud was only Buddy grown bigger, and he had
never lacked the spirit to look out for himself. Remember, too, that
he must have acquired something of a vocabulary, in the course
of twenty-one years of absorbing everything that came within his
experience.

Dirk reached for his gun, but Bud was expecting that. Dirk was not quite
quick enough, and his hand therefore came forward with a jerk when he
saw that he was "covered." Bud leaned, pulled Dirk's six-shooter from
its holster and sent it spinning into a clump of bushes. He snatched a
wicked-looking knife from Dirk's boot where he had once seen Dirk slip
it sheathed when he dressed in the bunk-house, and sent that after the
gun.

"Now, you long-eared walrus, you're in a position to play fair. What are
you going to do about it?