ch and it's getting on my nerves.
Might as well be a sheep-herd as hold down this job; then I'd have a dog
to talk to at any rate. Well, wolfing it like this won't do my
complexion any good; guess I'll go and get my beauty sleep!" But the
gray eyes held an unusual languor when he rode out in the morning, and
the look of worriment increased with every strenuous hour; all
throughout the night had he lain wide-eyed, and the experience was a
disturbing one. Never before had sleep been denied him; even on that
memorable night when, in a difference of opinion as to whose horse was
entitled to precedence at the public watering trough in Tin Cup, he had
roped and dragged nigh to death the foreman of the C Bar outfit, he had
audaciously crept into the bunkhouse of the outraged fellows who were
vengefully seeking him in every place but the right one, and after
calmly appropriating the personal blankets of his victim, had slept the
sleep of vindicated virtue. That this necessitated his shooting his way
out, on his discovery by the astonished outfit the next morning, in
nowise affected the soundness of his slumbers; sleep was imperative to
this hard-working young man, and the incident had gone far towards the
establishment of his standing on the range. He had watered his horses
unchallenged and slept undisturbedly ever since.

Therefore his last night's experience was anomalous to a degree and one
to be reckoned with seriously. In Douglass's perplexity he decided to
extend the day's pascar to Tin Cup and get decently drunk; convinced
that conviviality was the one essential lacking to his happiness. He
dismounted at the ford of the creek on, the outskirts of the village and
looked solicitously after the condition of his revolver. Not that he
deliberately, contemplated "shooting up" the town; but there was always
the possibility of the C Bar gang coming into town after their mail and
it was only proper and wise to provide against contingencies. And Ken's
favorite maxim was, "Never overlook no bets."

CHAPTER II

THE MARK OF THE BEAST

As he rode slowly up the little squalid street, seemingly lost in a
brown study and gazing abstractedly straight between his horse's ears,
he was in reality keenly alive to his surroundings. Not a face or
movement escaped him, and his mouth hardened ever so slightly as he
noted a couple of C Bar horses tied to the hitching rail before the door
of the Alcazar saloon. Dismounting leisurely bef