usted, ending with an often expressed desire for a woman
cook who could also perform a few household chores, tagged with a last
attempt to persuade Mormon to marry some comfortable person who would
act in that capacity, they had reverted to the good-humored chaff that
always marked their talks together.

Mormon, with stubby fingers wonderfully deft, was plaiting horsehair
about a stick of hardwood to form the handle of a quirt, Sandy
overhauling his two Colts and Sam furnishing orchestra on his harmonica.
Now he put it to his lips, unable to find a sufficiently crushing retort
to Mormon's diatribe against words of more than one syllable, breathing
out the burden of "My Bonnie lies over the Ocean."

Mormon, in a husky, yet musical bass, supplied the cowboy's version of
the words.

"Last night, as I lay in the per-rair-ree.
And gazed at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy,
Could drift to that sweet by-an'-by.

"Roll on, roll on,
Roll on, li'l' dogies, roll----"

He broke off suddenly, staring at the fringe of the waving mesquite.

"Look at that ornery coyote!" he said. "Got his nerve with him, the
mangy calf-eater, comin' up to the ranch thataway."

Sam put down his harmonica.

"My Winchester's jest inside the door," he said. "But he'd scoot if I
moved. Slip in a shell, Sandy, mebbe you kin git him in a minute."

"Yo're sheddin' yore skin, Sam. Got horn over yore eyes. Mormon, you
need glasses fo' yore old age. That ain't a coyote, it's a dawg,"
pronounced Sandy.

The creature left the cover of the mesquite and came slowly but
determinedly toward the ranch-house, past the corral and cook shack; its
daring proclaiming it anything but a cowardly, foot-hill coyote. Its
coat was whitish gray. Its brush was down, almost trailing, its muzzle
drooped, it went lamely on all four legs and occasionally limped on
three.

"Collie!" proclaimed Sandy. "Pore devil's plumb tuckered out."

"Sheepdawg!" affirmed Sam, disgust in his voice. "Hell of a gall to come
round a cattle ranch."

The gray-white dog came on, dry tongue lolling, observant of the men,
glancing toward the tenaya where it smelled the slumbering Pedro and
Joe. It halted twenty feet from the porch, one paw up, as Sandy bent
forward and called to it.

"Come on, you dawg. Come in, ol' feller. Mormon, take that hair out of
that pan of water an' set it where he can see it."

Mormon shifted the pan in which he had