d you Skeeter to ride home. Or if you want to buy
him back, you can have him for sixty dollars or such a matter. He 's a
nice little horse,--if you aren't in a hurry!"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: WHY BUD MISSED A DANCE

"Bud, you're fourteen kinds of a damn fool and I can prove it," Jerry
announced without prelude of any kind save, perhaps, the viciousness
with which he thrust a pitchfork into a cock of hay. The two were
turning over hay-cocks that had been drenched with another unwelcome
storm, and they had not been talking much. "Forking" soggy hay when
the sun is blistering hot and great, long-billed mosquitoes are boring
indefatigably into the back of one's neck is not a pastime conducive to
polite and animated conversation.

"Fly at it," Bud invited, resting his fork while he scratched a smarting
shoulder. "But you can skip some of the evidence. I know seven of the
kinds, and I plead guilty. Any able-bodied man who will deliberately
make a barbecue of himself for a gang of blood-thirsty insects ought to
be hanged. What's the rest?"

"You can call that mild," Jerry stated severely. "Bud, you're playing to
lose the shirt off your back. You've got a hundred dollar forfeit up
on next Sunday's running match, so you'll run if you have to race Boise
afoot. That's all right if you want the risk--but did it ever occur to
you that if all the coin in the neighborhood is collected in one man's
pocket, there'll be about as many fellows as there are losers, that will
lay awake till sun-up figuring how to heel him and ride off with the
roll? I ain't over-stocked with courage, myself. I'd rather be broke in
Burroback Valley than owner of wealth. It's healthier."

He thrust his fork into another settled heap, lifted it clear of the
ground with one heave of his muscular shoulders, and heard within a
strident buzzing. He held the hay poised until a mottled gray
snake writhed into view, its ugly jaws open and its fangs showing
malevolently.

"Grab him with your fork, Bud," Jerry said coolly. "A rattler--the
valley's full of 'em,--some of 'em 's human."

The snake was dispatched and the two went on to the next hay-cock.
Bud was turning over more than the hay, and presently he spoke more
seriously than was his habit with Jerry.

"You're full enough of warnings, Jerry. What do you want me to do about
it?"

"Drift," Jerry advised. "There's moral diseases just as catching as
smallpox. This part of the country has been settled up by me