e meditated long, a critical smile
reaching his lips.

"It's right warm to-day. Not just the kind of an atmosphere that a man
ought to be runnin' his horse reckless in." He meditated again.

"How far would you say he's off, Mustard? Ten miles, I reckon you'd
say if you was a knowin' horse."

The horseman had reached a slight ridge and for a moment he appeared on
the crest of it, racing his pony toward the river. Then he suddenly
disappeared.

Ferguson smiled coldly. Again his gaze swept the plains and the ridges
about him. "I don't see nothin' that'd make a man ride like that in
this heat," he said. "Where would he have come from?" He stared
obliquely off at a deep gully almost hidden by an adjoining ridge.

"It's been pretty near an hour since I shot that snake. I didn't see
no man about that time. If he was around here he must have heard my
gun--an' sloped." He smiled and urged his pony about. "I reckon we'll
go look around that gully a little, Mustard," he said.

Half an hour later he rode down into the gully. After going some
little distance he came across a dead cow, lying close to an
overhanging rock rim. A bullet hole in the cow's forehead told
eloquently of the manner of her death.

Ferguson dismounted and laid a hand on her side. The body was still
warm. A four-months' calf was nudging the mother with an inquisitive
muzzle. Ferguson took a sharp glance at its ears and then drove it off
to get a look at the brand. There was none.

"Sleeper," he said quietly. "With the Two Diamond ear-mark. Most
range bosses make a mistake in not brandin' their calves. Seems as if
they're trustin' to luck that rustlers won't work on them. I must have
scared this one off."

He swung into the saddle, a queer light in his eyes. "Mustard, old
boy, we're goin' to Bear Flat. Mebbe Radford's hangin' around there
now. An' mebbe he ain't. But we're goin' to see."

But he halted a moment to bend a pitying glance at the calf.

"Poor little dogie," he said; "poor little orphan. Losin' your
mother--just like a human bein'. I call that mean luck."

Then he was off, Mustard swinging in a steady lope down the gully and
up toward the ridge that led to the river trail.

CHAPTER IX

WOULD YOU BE A "CHARACTER"?

The sun was still a shimmering white blur in the great arc of sky when
Ferguson rode around the corner of the cabin in Bear Flat, halted his
pony, and sat quietly in the saddle before the