e
harness. They were the youngsters of the outfit, liked each other, and
as the months went by became known--Ma Bailey had read the book--as
"The Heavenly Twins." Bailey asked his good wife why "heavenly." He
averred that "twins was all right--but as for 'heavenly'--"

Mrs. Bailey chuckled. "I'm callin' 'em 'heavenly,' Jim, to kind of
even up for what the boys call 'em. I don't use that kind of language."

Pete graduated from peeling potatoes and helping about the house to
riding line with young Andy, until the fall round-up called for all
hands, the loading of the chuck-wagon and a farewell to the lazy days
at the home ranch. The air was keen with the tang of autumn. The
hillside blue of spruce and pine was splashed here and there with the
rich gold of the quaking asp. Far vistas grew clearer as the haze of
summer heat waned and fled before the stealthy harbingers of winter.
In the lower levels of the distant desert, heat waves still pulsed
above the grayish brown reaches of sand and brush--but the desert was
fifty, sixty, eighty miles away, spoken of as "down there" by the
riders of the high country. And Young Pete, detailed to help "gather"
in some of the most rugged timberland of the Blue, would not have
changed places with any man. He had been allotted a string of ponies,
placed under the supervision of an old hand, entered on the pay-roll at
the nominal salary of thirty dollars a month, and turned out to do his
share in the big round-up, wherein riders from the T-Bar-T, the Blue,
the Eight-O-Eight, and the Concho rode with a loose rein and a quick
spur, gathering and bunching the large herds over the high country.

There was a fly in Pete's coffee, however. Young Andy White had been
detailed to ride another section of the country. Bailey had wisely
separated these young hopefuls, fearing that competition--for they were
always striving to outdo each other--might lead to a hard fall for one
or both. Moreover, they were always up to some mischief or other--Andy
working the schemes that Pete usually invented for the occasion. Up to
the time that he arrived at the Concho ranch, Young Pete had never
known the joy of good-natured, rough-and-tumble horseplay, that
wholesome diversion that tries a man out, and either rubs off the
ragged edges of his temper or marks him as an undesirable and
to-be-let-alone. Pete, while possessing a workable sense of humor, was
intense--somewhat quick on the trigger, so to