gentleman over there at the table for forty blues. I'll
settle with him."

Instinctively, as before, Blair's thin hand went to his throat,
clutching at the coarse flannel. He saw he was beaten.

"Well, give me a drink, anyway!"

Silently Mick took a big flask from the shelf and set it with a decanter
upon the bar. Filling the glass, Blair drained it at a gulp, refilled
and drained it--and then again.

"A little drop to take along with me," he whined.

Kennedy selected a pint bottle, filled it from the big flask, and
silently proffered it over the board.

Blair took the extended favor, glanced once more about the room, and
stumbled toward the exit. Mick busied himself wiping the soiled bar with
a towel, if possible, even more filthy. At the threshold, his hand upon
the knob, Blair paused, stiffened, grew livid in the face.

"May Satan blister your scoundrel souls, all of you!" he cursed.

Not a man within sound of his voice gave sign that he had heard, as the
opened door returned to its casing with a crash.

CHAPTER II

DESOLATION

Ten miles out on the prairies,--not lands plane as a table, as they are
usually pictured, but rolling like the sea with waves of tremendous
amplitude--stood a rough shack, called by courtesy a house. Like many a
more pretentious domicile, it was of composite construction, although
consisting of but one room. At the base was the native prairie sod,
piled tier upon tier. Above this the superstructure, like the bar of
Mick Kennedy's resort, was of warping cottonwood. Built out from this
single room and forming a part of it was what the designer had called a
woodshed; but as no tree the size of a man's wrist was within ten miles,
or a railroad within fifty, the term was manifestly a misnomer. Wood in
any form it had never contained; instead, it was filled with that
providential fuel of the frontiersman, found superabundantly upon the
ranges,--buffalo chips.

From the main room there was another and much smaller opening into the
sod foundation, and below it,--a dog-kennel. Slightly apart from the
shack stood a twin structure even less assuming, its walls and roof
being wholly built of sod. It was likewise without partition, and was
used as a barn. Hard by was a corral covering perhaps two acres,
enclosed with a barbed-wire fence. These three excrescences upon the
face of nature comprised the "improvements" of the "Big B Ranch."

Within the house the furnishings accorded wit