--then he looked down upon Hardy and
chuckled to himself.

"I'm glad you're going to be along this trip," he said confidentially.
"Of course I'm lonely as a lost dog out there, but that ain't it; the
fact is, I need somebody to watch me. W'y, boy, I could beat the old
judge out of a thousand dollars' worth of cattle and he'd never know
it in a lifetime. Did ye ever live all alone out on a ranch for a
month or so? Well, you know how lawless and pisen-mean a man can git,
then, associatin' with himself. I'd've had the old man robbed forty
times over if he wasn't such a good-hearted old boy, but between
fightin' sheepmen and keepin' tab on a passel of brand experts up on
the Tonto I'm gittin' so ornery I don't dare trust myself. Have a
smoke? Oh, I forgot--"

He laughed awkwardly and rolled a cigarette.

"Got a match?" he demanded austerely. "Um, much obliged--be kinder
handy to have you along now." He knit his brows fiercely as he fired
up, regarding Hardy with a furtive grin.

"Say," he said abruptly, "I've got to make friends with you some way.
You _eat_, don't you? All right then, you come along with me over to
the Chink's. I'm going to treat you to somethin', if it's only ham 'n'
eggs."

They dined largely at Charley's and then drifted out to the feed
corral. Creede threw down some hay to a ponderous iron-scarred roan,
more like a war horse than a cow pony, and when he came back he found
Hardy doing as much for a clean-limbed sorrel, over by the gate.

"Yourn?" he inquired, surveying it with the keen concentrated gaze
which stamps every point on a cowboy's memory for life.

"Sure," returned Hardy, patting his pony carefully upon the shoulder.

"Kinder high-headed, ain't he?" ventured Creede, as the sorrel rolled
his eyes and snorted.

"That's right," assented Hardy, "he's only been broke about a month. I
got him over in the Sulphur Springs Valley."

"I knowed it," said the cowboy sagely, "one of them wire-grass
horses--an' I bet he can travel, too. Did you ride him all the way
here?"

"Clean from the Chiricahuas," replied the young man, and Jefferson
Creede looked up, startled.

"What did you say you was doin' over there?" he inquired slowly, and
Hardy smiled quietly as he answered:

"Riding for the Cherrycow outfit."

"The hell you say!" exclaimed Creede explosively, and for a long time
he stood silent, smoking as if in deep meditation.

"Well," he said at last, "I might as well say it--I took you