wnfall.

"I think you will, though, Babe, if I get out of this with a whole hide."

"You'll be so well fixed you can git married then?" There was some
constraint in Babe's tone, which he meant to be casual.

Ralston's heart gave him a twinge of pain.

"I s'pose you've had every chance to git acquainted with the Schoolmarm,"
he observed, since Ralston did not reply.

"She doesn't like me, Babe."

"_What_!" yelled Babe, screwing up his face in a grimace of surprise and
unbelief.

"She would rather talk to Ling than to me--at least, she seems far more
friendly to any one else than to me."

"Say, she must be loony not to like you!"

Ralston could not help laughing outright at Babe's vigorous loyalty.

"It's not necessarily a sign of insanity to dislike me."

"She doesn't go that far, does she?" demanded Babe.

"Sometimes I think so."

"You don't care a-tall, do you?"

"Yes," Ralston replied quietly; "I care a great deal. It hurts me more
than I ever was hurt before; because, you see, Babe, I never loved a woman
before."

"Aw-w-w," replied Babe, in deepest sympathy.

Smith had congratulated himself often during the day upon the fact that he
could not have chosen a more propitious time for the execution of his
plans--at least, so far as the Bar C outfit was concerned. His uneasiness
passed as the protecting darkness fell without their having seen a single
person the entire day.

When the last glimmer of daylight had faded, Tubbs and Smith started on
the drive, heading the cattle direct for their destination. They were
fatter than Smith had supposed, so they could not travel as rapidly as he
had calculated, but he and Tubbs pushed them along as fast as they could
without overheating them.

The darkness, which gave Smith courage, made Tubbs nervous. He swore at
the cattle, he swore at his horse, he swore at the rocks over which his
horse stumbled; and he constantly strained his roving eyes to penetrate
the darkness for pursuers. Every gulch and gully held for him a fresh
terror.

"Gee! I wisht I was out of this onct!" burst from him when the howl of a
wolf set his nerves jangling.

"What'd you say?" Smith stopped in the middle of a song he was singing.

"I said I wisht I was down where the monkeys are throwin' nuts! I'm
chilly," declared Tubbs.

"Chilly? It's hot!"

Smith was light-hearted, sanguine. He told himself that perhaps it was as
well, after all, that the hold-ups had got off with the "old