see you in your ranch clothes again. I bet you've clean forgot
how to ride and rope and--"

"You know very well I haven't. I'm a little bit rusty, perhaps, but
remember I'm a pretty busy girl these days."

"I know." Tom sighed. "I'm wore out, too. What d'you say we close up
the ol' factory and take a rest? Let's get us a couple of broncs and go
up to the Territory for a spell. Used to be a lot of wild turkeys in a
place I know. It'd do us a lot of good."

"Why, dad, we can't do that! And, besides, those turkeys were killed
out years ago."

"Um-m! I s'pose so. Ain't much left to shoot at but tin cans, come to
think of it." There was a pause. "I don't reckon you could han'le a six
gun like you used to, 'Bob.'"

"You think not? Try me sometime and see," said the girl. Apparently Tom
believed there was no time like the present, for he slid his right hand
under the left lapel of his coat, and when he brought it away there was
a large single-action Colt's revolver in it--a massive weapon upon the
mother-of-pearl handle plates of which were carved two steers' heads.
Those steers' heads Tom had removed from a gun belonging to a famous
bad man, suddenly deceased, and there was a story that went with them.

"Now see here," "Bob" protested, "one of these new policemen will pick
you up some day."

"Pshaw! Nobody wouldn't pick me up, just for totin' a gun," the old man
declared. With practiced fingers he extracted the shells, one by one.
"I feel right naked without a six-shooter. I feel like I'd cast a shoe,
or something."

"I wish you'd give up carrying it."

"Lessee you do a few tricks,'Bob'. Do the roll. Remember she don't
stand cocked."

Miss Parker rose to her feet and took the weapon. She balanced it in
her hand, then she spun it, rolled it, fanned it, went through a
routine of lightninglike sleight-of-hand that Tom had taught her long
before.

"Lessee you do a few shots," her father urged, when she handed it back
to him.

"In _here_?"

"Sure! It's our shanty. Drive a few nails or--I'll tell you; kill that
bear and save that tenderfoot's life." Tom pointed to a Winchester
calendar on the rear wall, which bore the lithographic likeness of an
enraged grizzly upon the point of helping himself to a hunter.

"Why, we'd have the whole town running in."

"Go on, son. Make it speak. Bears is easy killed."

"Nonsense."

Reluctantly Tom reloaded his weapon and thrust it back into its
shoulder holster; regretfull