position as Bud's employer to crush the younger man. Indeed, at the
end of the scene which ensued he well-nigh convinced himself that he
had been most ungratefully treated by Bud while sincerely attempting to
save the boy from the companionship of a fiend in human guise.

"No matter who told me, young man," he exclaimed; "I got it straight,
and you can take it straight from me. You either give up Buck McKee or
the Sweetwater Ranch. Snake-in-the-grass!" he was working himself up
into false passion; "it is you, ungrateful boy, who are sinking the
serpent's tooth in the hand that would have helped you. I tell you
that I intended to make you foreman, though Sage-brush Charley is an
older and better man. It was for Dick's sake I would have done it."

"No!" Bud burst forth; "for your guilty conscience's sake. It would
have been to pay for stepping into Dick's place in the heart of a
faithless girl. To hell with your job; I'm through with you!"

And, leaping on his horse, Bud rode furiously back to rejoin Buck McKee
in Florence.

Jack Payson's purpose was now cinched to suppress Dick Lane's letter
until Echo Allen was irrevocably joined to him in marriage. He argued
with himself that she loved him, Jack Payson, yet so loyal was she by
nature that if Dick Lane returned before the wedding and claimed her,
she would sacrifice her love to her sense of duty. This would ruin her
life, he reasoned, and he could not permit it. There was honesty in
this argument, but he vitiated it by deferring to act upon the
suggestion that naturally arose with it: Why, then, not take Jim
Allen, Echo's father, to whom her happiness was the chief purpose in
life, into confidence in regard to the matter? There will be time
enough to tell the Colonel before the wedding, he thought. In the
meantime something might happen to Dick,, and he may never return. He
is certain not to get back ahead of his money.

After the time that the note secured by the mortgage fell due, the
young ranchman had already secured two extensions of it for three
months each. He arranged a third, and began negotiating for the sale
of some of his cattle to take up the note at the time of payment. "I
can't take the money from Dick," he thought, "even if he does owe it to
me. And yet if I refuse it, it will be like buying Echo--'paying for
stepping into Dick's place,' as Bud expressed it. What to do I don't
know. Well, events will decide." And by this favorit