lishing his position on the crest of the
little hill where the empty shell was found, a position that commanded
the corral and all the country likely to be traversed by the blue in
his attempt to escape!

"He figgered the blue would break back, and that you would try to turn
him," said Red. "Yuh have had a close call, son!"

"Yet he saved her," said Douglass, steadily. "That's a big payment, Red,
a big payment!"

"Yep!" answered McVey, noncommittally, "but only part payment."

CHAPTER X

THAT WHICH IS CAESAR'S

The round-up was over, the marketable beef cut out and shipped, and life
at the C Bar had resumed the normality of quiet routine. From now until
spring the ranch labor would be nominal; a few weaklings to be fed and
nurtured through the rigors of winter, a few likely colts to be broken
and "gentled" against the next season's requirements, a few necessary
repairs to equipment and fences, much wood hauling for the long night's
consumption, and an engaging season of rest and recuperation for man and
beast.

All throughout the range there is a general reduction of working forces
at this period, the superfluous men seeking the larger towns for the
commendable purpose of putting into active circulation their season's
hoardings; that they are almost always obsessed with a weird delusion
that somewhere in the gilded halls of Chance the fickle dame Fortune
awaits their coming with a whole cornucopia of royal favors, aces by
preference, only insures the economy of time to that end. For whether
she smile or not, there be always dames and favors of price to reward
the ambitious; and to be lucky in love is even more expensive than to be
unlucky at cards. The process may be conditionally prolonged, but the
final result is always the same. By the time the grass greens again
they have been divested of everything, even of their cares, and are
ready to take up the broken threads of the endless chain that links them
indissolubly to the old traditions.

The C Bar outfit had narrowed down to four men besides Douglass. Red,
Woolly, Punk and a saturnine-faced Texan whose addiction to unique
expletives of an unconventional nature had secured for him the sobriquet
of "Holy Joe." The two latter were detailed to "riding fences" while Red
and Woolly did desultory choring and hauled wood.

Robert Carter had returned for the rodeo and he and Douglass had enjoyed
several hunting trips in company afterward; that is to say, th