up to you, then. Let's see you make
me."

Sitting there with his gaze steadily on the boy, Cass had Bob at a
disadvantage. If the sheep owner had tried to break away into the
chaparral. Bob could have blazed away at him, but he could not shoot a man
looking at him with cynical, amused eyes. He could understand the point of
view of his adversary. If Fendrick rode into the Circle C under compulsion
of a gun in the hands of a boy he would never hear the end of the laugh on
him.

"You won't try to light out, will you?"

"I've got no notion of lighting out."

Bob put up his big blue gun reluctantly. Never before had it been trained
on a human being, and it was a wrench to give up the thought of bringing
in the enemy as a prisoner. But he saw he could not pull it off. Fendrick
had declined to scare, had practically laughed him out of it. The boy had
not meant his command as a bluff, but Cass knew him better than he did
himself.

They turned toward the Circle C.

"Must have been taking lessons on how to bend a gun. You in training for
sheriff, or are you going to take Bucky's place with the rangers?"
Fendrick asked with casual impudence, malicious amusement gleaming from
his lazy eyes.

Bob, very red about the ears, took refuge in a sulky silence. He was being
guyed, and not by an inch did he propose to compromise the Cullison
dignity.

"From the way you go at it, I figure you an old hand at the hold-up game.
Wonder if you didn't pull off the W. & S. raid yourself."

Bob writhed impotently. At this sort of thing he was no match for the
other. Fendrick, now in the best of humors, planted lazily his offhand
barbs.

Kate was seated on the porch sewing. She rose in surprise when her cousin
and the sheepman appeared. They came with jingling spurs across the plaza
toward her. Bob was red as a turkeycock, but Fendrick wore his most
devil-may-care insouciance.

"Where's Uncle Luck, sis? I've brought this fellow back with me. Caught
him on the mesa," explained the boy sulkily.

Fendrick bowed rather extravagantly and flashed at the girl a smiling
double-row of strong white teeth. "He's qualifying for a moving-picture
show actor, Miss Cullison. I hadn't the heart to disappoint him when he
got that cannon trained on me. So here I am."

Kate looked at him and then let her gaze travel to her cousin. She somehow
gave the effect of judging him of negligible value.

"I think he's in his office, Bob. I'll go see."

She wen