ul of whiskey
between Collie's lips. Then the taciturn foreman lifted the youth to his
feet. Collie dragged along, stepping shakily. "Dam' little fool!" said
Williams affectionately. "You ain't satisfied to get killed where you
belong, but you got to go and splatter yourself all over the front yard
in front of the ladies. You with your bloody nose and your face shot
plumb full of gravel. If you knowed how you looked when she piled you--"

"I know how she looked," said Collie. "That's good enough for me. Did I
make it?"

"The bronc' is yours," said Williams. "Bud and Miguel just rode out
after her."

Then Williams did an unaccountable thing. He hunted among the crowd till
he found the man who had said, "Why, that ain't ridin'." He asked the
man quietly if he had made such a remark. The other replied that he had.
Then Williams promptly knocked him down, with all the wiry strength of
his six feet of bone and muscle. "Take that home and look at it," he
remarked, walking away.

Through the dusk of the evening the Moonstone boys jingled homeward, the
horses climbing the trail briskly. Two of them worked the outlaw up the
hill, each with a rope on her and each exceedingly busy. Collie was too
stiff and sore to help them.

Miguel, hilarious in that he had ridden Boyar to second place, and so
upheld the Moonstone honor, sang many strange and wonderful songs and
baited Collie between-whiles. Proud of their companion's conquest of the
outlaw colt, the Moonstone boys made light of it proportionately.

"Did you see him reclinin' on that Yuma grasshopper," said Bud Light,
"and pertendin' he was ridin' a hoss?"

"And then," added Billy Dime, "he gets so het up and proud that he rides
right over to the ladies, and 'flop' he goes like swattin' a frog with a
shingle. He rides about five rods on the cayuse and then five more on
his map. Collie's sure tough. How's your mug, kid?"

"It never felt so bad as yours looks naturally," responded Collie,
puffing at a cigarette with swollen lips. "But I ain't jealous."

"Now, ain't you?" queried Williams, who had ridden silently beside him.
"Well, now, I was plumb mistook! I kind of thought you was."

CHAPTER XXIII

SILENT SAUNDERS SPEAKS

Meanwhile Collie kept a vigilant eye on Silent Saunders. The other,
somewhat sullenly but efficiently, attended to his work. Collie's
vigilance was rewarded unexpectedly and rather disagreeably.

One day, as he stood stroking Black Boyar's