ires at the flash and
disposes o' the herder, sort o' evenin' matters up. This leaves only one
cowpuncher and the cook. There's still three men at the herders' camp.

"Then the cook, he indooces a bullet to become sufficient intimate with
one o' the herder's anatomy, but gits a hole in the leg himself an' is
laid up. The other cowpuncher runs the gauntlet an' gits out safe. He
hikes back the next day with a bunch o' boys, an' they follows up the
herders an' wipes out that camp for fair, an' stampedes the herd over
the nearest canyon. Then they circles back to the coulee to pick up the
cook.

"When they gits there, they surely finds themselves up against evidences
of a tragedy. The cook, he's lyin' on the floor of the shack, dead as a
nail, an' near him is the kid, who's still holdin' a table-knife in his
hand, but who's lyin' unconscious from a wound in the head. The way they
dopes it out, there's been a free-for-all fight in the place between the
two remainin' herders an' the wounded cook, an' it looks some as if the
kid had tried to help his dad by jabbin' at the legs o' the herders with
a knife and been booted in the side o' the head to keep him quiet."

"How old was the youngster, then, Bob-Cat?" asked Wilbur.

"Seven or eight, I guess, maybe not so much," replied the other, "a
nice, bright little kid, so I've heard. But there was somethin' broke, I
reckon, by the blow he had, an' he never got over it. The boys took him
back to the ranch an' doctored him the best they knew how, but they was
buckin' fate an' had to quit, lettin' the kid git better or worse as it
might turn out."

"But where does Rifle-Eye come in?"

"This way. Just before round-up, Rifle-Eye comes along, showin' he has
the whole story salted down, though where he larned it gits me, and
proposes that sence it was the sheepmen that injured the lad, it's up to
them to look after him. At first the boys objects, sayin' that the kid
was a cowpuncher's kid, but Rifle-Eye convinces 'em that the youngster's
locoed for fair, that he's likely to stay that way for good an' all, and
sence they agrees they can't ever make anythin' out of him, they lets
him go.

"Then Rifle-Eye, he takes this unfortunate kid to the man that owned
the sheep. He's a big owner, this man, and runs thirty or forty herds.
The old hunter--this was all before he was a Ranger, you know--he puts
it right up to the sheep-owner, who's a half-Indian, by the way, an'
tells him that he's