stickler for naked realism. The "bad men" of Yeager's
acquaintance had usually been quiet, soft-spoken citizens, notable
chiefly for a certain chilliness of the eye and an efficient economy of
expression that eliminated waste. Those that Threewit featured were of a
different type. They strutted and bragged and made gun plays on every
possible occasion.

Perhaps this was why Harrison's stuff got across. By nature a swaggering
bully, he had only to turn loose his real impulses to register what the
director wanted of a bad man. In the rough-and-tumble life he had led,
it had been Yeager's business to know men. He made no mistake about
Harrison. The fellow might be a loud-mouthed braggart; none the less he
would go the limit. The man was game.

Lennox met Steve one day as the latter was returning from the property
room with a saddle Threewit had asked him to adjust. The star stopped
him good-naturedly.

"Care to put the gloves on with me some time, Yeager?"

The cowpuncher's face brightened. "I sure would. The boys say you're the
best ever with the mitts."

"I'm a pretty good boxer, but I don't trail in your class as a fighter.
What you need is to take some lessons. If you'd care to have me show you
what I know--"

"Say, you've rung the bell first shot."

"Come up to the hotel to-night, then. No need advertising it. Harrison
might pick another quarrel with you to show you what you don't know."

Steve laughed. "He's ce'tainly one tough citizen. He can look at a pine
board so darned sultry it begins to smoke. All right. Be up there
to-night, Mr. Lennox."

From that day the boxing lessons became a regular thing. The claim
Lennox had made for himself had scarcely done him justice. He was one of
the best amateur boxers in the West. In Yeager he had a pupil quick to
learn. The extra was a perfect specimen physically, narrow of flank,
broad of shoulder, with the well-packed muscles of one always trained to
the minute. Fifteen years in the saddle had given him a toughness of
fiber no city dweller could possibly equal. Nights under the multiple
stars in the hills, cool, invigorating mornings with the pine-filled air
strong as wine in his clean blood, long days of sunshine full of action,
had all contributed to make him the young Hermes that he was. Cool and
wary, supple as a wildcat, light as a dancing schoolgirl on his feet, he
had the qualities which go to help both the fighter and the boxer.
Lennox had never seen a man