few sheep with a breach of contract on your side of the fence. You've
put it up to me now like you should have done in the beginning. All
right; I'll prove myself, like David. But remember there was another
fellow by the name of Jacob that went in on a livestock deal with a
slippery man, and stick to your agreement this time."

"I don't want you to feel that I'm takin' advantage of you, John; I
don't want you to feel that way."

"I don't just feel it; I know it. I'll pay you for the seven sheep the
grizzly killed, and take it out of his hide when I catch him."

This offer mollified Tim, melting him down to smiles. He shook hands
with Mackenzie, all the heartiness on his side, refusing the offer
with voluble protestations that he neither expected nor required it.

"You've got the makin' of a sheepman in you, John; I always thought
you had. But----"

* * * * *

"You want to be shown. All right; I'm game, even at forty dollars and
found."

Tim beamed at this declaration, but the fires of his satisfaction he
was crafty enough to hide from even Mackenzie's penetrating eyes.
Perhaps the glow was due to a thought that this schoolmaster, who owed
his notoriety in the sheeplands to a lucky blow, would fail, leaving
him far ahead on the deal. He tightened his girths and set his foot in
the stirrup, ready to mount and ride home; paused so, hand on the
saddle-horn, with a queer, half-puzzled, half-suspicious look in his
sheep-wise eyes.

"Wasn't there something else that feller Jacob was workin' for besides
the interest in the stock?" he asked.

"Seems to me like there was," Mackenzie returned, carelessly. "The
main thing I remember in the transaction was the stone he set up
between the old man and himself on the range. 'The Lord watch between
thee and me,' you know, it had on it. That's a mighty good motto yet
for a sheepherder to front around where his boss can read it. A man's
got to have somebody to keep an eye on a sheepman when his back's
turned, even today."

Tim laughed, swung into the saddle, where he sat roving his eyes over
the range, and back to the little band of sheep that seemed only a
handful of dust in the unbounded pastures where they fed. The
hillsides were green in that favored section, greener than anywhere
Mackenzie had been in the sheeplands, the grass already long for the
lack of mouths to feed. Tim's face glowed at the sight.

"This is the best grazin