ober," replied Pan warmly.
"What're you doing out here?"

Moran braced himself, not without the help of his hold upon Pan, and it
was evident that this meeting had roused him.

"Pan, meet my pard heah," he began, indicating a stalwart young man in
overalls and high boots. "Gus Hans, puncher of Montana."

Pan shook hands with the grinning cowboy.

"Pard, yore shakin' the paw of Panhandle Smith," announced Moran in
solemn emotion. "This heah's the boy, frens. You've heerd me rave
many's the time. He was my pard, my bunkmate, my brother. We rode the
Cimarron together, an' the Arkansaw, an' we was the only straight
punchers in the Long Bar C outfit that was drove out of Wyomin'....
His beat never forked a hoss or coiled a rope. An' shorer'n hell,
pard, I'd been a rustler but fer Panhandle. More'n onct he throwed his
gun fer me an--"

"Say, Blink, I'll have to choke you," interrupted Pan, laughing. "Now,
you meet my friends here, Miss Louise--and Charley Brown."

Pan did not miss the effect the bright-eyed red-lipped girl made upon
the cowboys, especially Moran who, he remembered, had always succumbed
easily to feminine charms.

"Blinky, you've been drinking too much to dance with a lady," presently
remarked Louise.

"Wal, now, Miss, I'm as sober as Panhandle there," replied Moran
ardently.

She shook her curly head smilingly and, rising from the table, went
round to Pan and leaned up to him with both wistfulness and
recklessness in her face.

"Panhandle Smith, I'll leave you to your friends," she said. "But
don't you drift in here again--for if you do--I'll forget my sacrifice
for little Alice.... There!"

She kissed him square on the lips and ran off without a backward glance.

Blinky fell into a chair, overcome with some unusual kind of emotion.
He stared comically at Pan.

"Say, ole pard, you used to be shy of skirts!" he expostulated.

"Reckon I am yet, for all the evidence," retorted Pan, half amused and
half angry at the unexpected move of the girl.

Charley Brown joined in the mirth at Pan's expense.

"Guess the drinks are on me," he said. "And they'll be the last."

"Pan, thet there girl is Louie Melliss!" ejaculated Moran.

"Is it? Well, who in the deuce is she?"

"Say, cowboy, quit your foolin'!"

"Honest, I never saw or heard of the young lady till a few minutes ago.
Ask Brown."

"That's a fact," corroborated Brown, thus appealed to. "She's the
belle of this hell. Sure, S