s swept Ferguson's lank figure with a searching glance.
"But I didn't know you was havin' company," he added. The second
glance that he threw toward Ferguson was not friendly.

Ferguson's lips curled slightly under it. Each man had been measured
by the other, and neither had found in the other anything to admire.

Ferguson's thoughts went rapidly back to Dry Bottom. He saw a man in
the street, putting five bullets through a can that he had thrown into
the air. He saw again the man's face as he had completed his
exhibition--insolent, filled with a sneering triumph. He heard again
this man's voice, as he himself had offered to eclipse his feat:--

"You runnin' sheep, stranger?"

The voice and face of the man who stood before him now were the voice
and face of the man who had preceded him in the shooting match in Dry
Bottom. His thoughts were interrupted by the voice of his host,
explaining his presence.

"This here man was bit by a rattler this afternoon," the young man was
saying. "He's layin' up here for to-night. Says he's reckonin' on
gettin' a job over at the Two Diamond."

The man on the horse sneered. "Hell!" he said; "bit by a rattler!" He
laughed insolently, pulling his pony's head around. "I reckon I'll be
goin'," he said. "You'll nurse him so's he won't die?" He had struck
the pony's flanks with the spurs and was gone into the shadows before
either man on the porch could move. There was a short silence, while
the two men listened to the beat of his pony's hoofs. Then Ferguson
turned and spoke to the young man.

"You know him?" he questioned.

The young man smiled coldly. "Yep," he said; "he's range boss for the
Two Diamond!"

CHAPTER VI

AT THE TWO DIAMOND

As Ferguson rode through the pure sunshine of the morning his thoughts
kept going back to the little cabin in the flat--"Bear Flat," she had
called it. Certain things troubled him--he, whose mind had been always
untroubled--even through three months of idleness that had not been
exactly attractive.

"She's cert'nly got nice eyes," he told himself confidentially, as he
lingered slowly on his way; "an' she knows how to use them. She sure
made me seem some breathless. An' no girl has ever done that. An' her
hair is like"--he pondered long over this--"like--why, I reckon I
didn't just ever see anything like it. An' the way she looked at me!"

A shadow crossed his face. "So she's a writer--an' she's studied
medicine.