of the cards. "By rights you're
a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal. The cards have been
stacked on you--I'll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager."

"What?" asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.

"You're a prince-consort."

"Go easy," said Webb. "I never blackguarded you none."

"It's a title," explained Baldy, "up among the picture-cards; but it
don't take no tricks. I'll tell you, Webb. It's a brand they're got for
certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes
marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen.
Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we
march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal
Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and
accept the responsibility for the heir-apparent. That ain't any square
deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you're a prince-consort; and if I was you, I'd
start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin'; and I'd be king if
I had to turn from the bottom of the deck."

Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.

"Baldy," said Webb, solemnly, "me and you punched cows in the same
outfit for years. We been runnin' on the same range, and ridin' the same
trails since we was boys. I wouldn't talk about my family affairs to
nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married
Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don't amount
to a knot in a stake rope."

"When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued Baldy
with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much to say on
the ranch as he did."

"I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to get
my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from
the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to
call Santa the 'cattle queen.' I'm boss of the cattle--that's all. She
'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can't sell even
a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's the 'queen'; and I'm
Mr. Nobody."

"I'd be king if I was you," repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist.
"When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her--on the
hoof--dressed--dried--corned--any old way from the chaparral to the
packing-house. Lots of folks thinks it's funny, Webb, that you don't
have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin' none on Miz
Yea