expense and with an increased revenue,
the VN conditions being peculiarly adapted to such a policy. She
unhesitatingly authorized him to use his own discretion absolutely in
anything connected with her interests and he immediately ordered a
round-up with that end in view. He had already arranged for the sale of
the cattle, he somewhat abashedly confessed to her secret amusement, and
at a price rather above current quotations. The change could be made
without either delay or loss and he was openly sanguine of the outcome
of his new plans. During his absence he had partly succeeded in rounding
up the cattle to be sold, and in ten days more he had delivered into her
hand the buyer's check covering the transaction. To her great surprise
it was for an amount some five thousand dollars in excess of the
original purchase price of the whole ranch; evidently her manager had
driven a very good bargain.

He did not think it necessary to tell her that he had caught the cowboys
of a big syndicate in the act of running a bunch of VN steers out of the
country under the pretense of a general round-up, or that he had gone
directly to the headquarters of the outfit with a rather peremptory
request that they buy the rest of the cattle together with the brand, a
suggestion that the guilty parties found it advisable to accept in view
of the direct evidence with which he confronted them of not only this,
but several other shady transactions of a similar nature. Nor was she
aware, until several days later, that in the course of a slight argument
which he had indulged in with one of the syndicate's men, whom he had
caught red-handed in the act of branding a VN calf whose mother lay in a
nearby gully with a bullet hole in her head, he had resorted to a little
"six-gun suasion" with the result that the other fellow was in the
hospital at Leadville, while Douglass nursed an ugly flesh wound in his
shoulder. The syndicate, composed largely of eastern men who for obvious
reasons could not afford to have their acts unduly ventilated, were very
glad to close with his rather excessive demands, backed as they were by
the smoothest-working gun and handiest shot on the range.

She made the discovery In a rather unexpected way. They were out riding
together one pleasant afternoon, and seduced by the magnificent going
and delightful weather had prolonged their pasear into the twilight
hours. On the return canter, Douglass's horse, affrightened by a
viciou