ring up and
reined his horse across the path and called out: "See here, you young
skunk, you're a poor, white-livered tenderfoot, and I can't bust you as I
would a full-grown man, but I reckon you better not ride this trail any
more."

"Why not?" inquired Wayland.

Belden glared. "Because I tell you so. Your sympathy-hunting game has
just about run into the ground. You've worked this baby dodge about long
enough. You're not so almighty sick as you put up to be, and you'd better
hunt some other cure for lonesomeness, or I'll just about cave your chest
in."

All this was shockingly plain talk for a slender young scholar to listen
to, but Norcross remained calm. "I think you're unnecessarily excited,"
he remarked. "I have no desire to make trouble. I'm considering Miss
Berea, who is too fine to be worried by us."

His tone was conciliating, and the cowman, in spite of himself, responded
to it. "That's why I advise you to go. She was all right till you came.
Colorado's a big place, and there are plenty other fine ranges for men of
your complaint--why not try Routt County? This is certain, you can't stay
in the same valley with my girl. I serve notice of that."

"You're making a prodigious ass of yourself," observed Wayland, with calm
contempt.

"You think so--do you? Well, I'll make a jack-rabbit out of you if I find
you on this ranch again. You've worked on my girl in some way till she's
jest about quit me. I don't see how you did it, you measly little pup,
but you surely have turned her against me!" His rage burst into flame as
he thought of her last words. "If you were so much as half a man I'd
break you in two pieces right now; but you're not, you're nothing but a
dead-on-the-hoof lunger, and there's nothing to do but run you out. So
take this as your final notice. You straddle a horse and head east and
keep a-ridin', and if I catch you with my girl again, I'll deal you a
whole hatful of misery--now that's right!"

Thereupon, with a final glance of hate in his face, he whirled his horse
and galloped away, leaving Norcross dumb with resentment, intermingled
with wonder.

"Truly the West is a dramatic country! Here I am, involved in a lover's
wrath, and under sentence of banishment, all within a month! Well, I
suppose there's nothing to do but carry out Belden's orders. He's the
boss," he said as he rode on. "I wonder just what happened after I left?
Something stormy, evidently. She must have given him a sharp r