t his boot straps. "I'll send
one whur the dogs won't bite him with every ca'tridge. We'll run a
thousand dollars' worth of taller off the rest of 'em. Git into your
clothes, Gentle Annie, and we'll smoke 'em up proper."

"I don't see how it could happen," said Wallie, his voice trembling.
"The fence was good!"

"If it had been twenty feet high 'twould 'a' been all the same," Pinkey
answered. "Them cattle was _drove_ in."

"You mean----" Wallie's mouth opened.

"Shore--Canby! It come to my mind last night when I seen that bunch
movin'. Pretty coarse work I call it, but he thought you was alone and
wouldn't ketch on to it."

"He'll pay for this!" cried Wallie, chokingly.

"You can't do nothin' with him but deal him misery. He's got too much
money and pull fer you. Do you know what I think's gnawin' on him?"

"My taking up a homestead----"

"That, too, but mostly because Helene dressed him down for sellin' that
locoed team to you. He's jealous."

Even in his despair Wallie felt pleased that any one, especially Canby,
should be jealous of him because of Helene Spenceley.

"He aims to marry her," Pinkey added. "I wisht you could beat his time
and win yerself a home somehow. I don't think you got any show, but if I
was you I'd take another turn around my saddle-horn and hang on.
Whenever I kin," kindly, "I'll speak a good word for you. Throw your
saddle on your horse and step, young feller. I'm gone!"

The faint hope which Wallie had nursed that the damage might not be so
great as he had feared vanished with daylight. Not only was the grain
trampled so the field looked like a race course, but panel after panel
of the fence was down where the quaking-asp posts had snapped like
lead-pencils.

As Pinkey and Wallie surveyed it in the early dawn Wallie's voice had a
catch in it when he said finally:

"I guess I'm done farming. They made a good job of it."

"I'm no 'sharp' but it looks to me like some of that wheat would
straighten up if it got a good wettin'."

Wallie said grimly:

"The only thing I forgot to buy when I was outfitting in Philadelphia
was a rain-making apparatus."

"On the level," Pinkey declared, earnestly, "I bleeve we're goin' to
have a shower--the clouds bankin' up over there in the northwest is what
made me think of it."

Wallie's short laugh was cynical.

"It might drown somebody half a mile from me but it wouldn't settle the
dust in my dooryard."

"I see you're gittin' homesteadit