buckboard manners, and even
office manners when he met the cattle barons in Cheyenne. No matter
what manners he chanced to be wearing, one remembered Saul Chadron
after meeting him, and carried the recollection of him to the sundown
of his day.

"We can talk here," said Chadron, giving the other a cigar.

The tall man broke the cigar and ground part of it in his palm,
looking with frowning thoughtfulness into the empty fireplace as the
tobacco crushed in his hard hand. He filled the pipe that he had
chosen, and sat with his long legs stretched out toward the
chimney-mouth.

"Well, go on and talk," said he.

His voice came smothered and hoarse, as if it lay beneath all the
oysters which he had rammed into his unseen hollow. It was a voice in
strange harmony with the man, such a sound as one would have expected
to come out of that surly, dark-lipped, thin mouth. There was nothing
committal about it, nothing exactly identifying; an impersonal voice,
rather, and cold; a voice with no conscience behind it, scarcely a
soul.

"You're a business man, Mark--"

"Huh!" said Mark, grunting a little cloud of smoke from the bowl of
his pipe in his sarcastic vehemence.

"And so am I," continued Chadron, unmoved. "Words between us would be
a waste of time."

"You're right; money talks," said Mark.

"It's a man's job, or I wouldn't have called you out of your hole to
do it," said Chadron, watching the man slyly for the effect.

"Pay me in money," suggested Mark, unwarmed by the compliment. "Is it
nesters ag'in?"

"Nesters," nodded the cattleman, drawing his great brows in a frown.
"They're crowdin' in so thick right around me that I can't breathe
comfortable any more; the smell of 'em's in the wind. They're runnin'
over three of the biggest ranches up here besides the Alamito, and the
Drovers' Association wants a little of your old-time holy scare
throwed into the cussed coyotes."

Mark nodded in the pause which seemed to have been made for him to
nod, and Chadron went on.

"We figger that if a dozen or two of 'em's cleaned out, quick and
mysterious, the rest'll tuck tail and sneak. It's happened that way in
other places more than once, as you and I know. Well, you're the man
that don't have to take lessons."

"Money talks," repeated Mark, still looking into the chimney.

"There's about twenty of them that counts, the rest's the kind you can
drive over a cliff with a whip. These fellers has strung their cussed
bob-