brass tacks! The time was when you could
walk up and down over me like a piece of hall carpet, and I'd lie there
and smile. That day's gone by. I've got wool on me now like a
bellwether, and I'm shaggy at the flanks like a wolf. I can be as mean
as a wolf, too, when the time comes. You can't walk up and down over me
any more!"

"Nobody wants to walk up and down over you!" she protested. "But if you
want to put Dr. Slavens off that homestead, go and do it. You'll not
draw me into any of your schemes and murderous plots, and you'll find
Dr. Slavens very well able to take care of himself, too!"

"Oh, sure he can!" scoffed Boyle. "You didn't seem to think so the time
you turned Comanche inside out hunting him, when he was layin' drunk
under a tent. I don't know what kind of a yarn he put up when he came
back to you, but I've got the goods on that quack, I'll give you to
understand!"

Boyle was dropping his polish, which was only a superficial coating at
the best. In the bone he was a cowboy, belonging to the type of those
who, during the rustlers' war, hired themselves out at five dollars a
day, and five dollars a head for every man they could kill. Boyle
himself had been a stripling in those days, and the roughness of his
training among a tribe of as desperate and unwashed villains as ever
disgraced the earth underlay his fair exterior, like collar-welts on a
horse which has been long at pasture.

"I'm not under obligations to keep anybody's secrets in this country
when it comes to that," Boyle reminded her.

"It couldn't be expected of you," she sighed.

"You're close to that feller," he pursued, "and he's as soft as cheese
on you. All right; pool your troubles and go on off together for all I
care, but before you turn another wheel you'll put the crowbar under
that man that'll lift him off of that land; savvy? Well, that's what
you'll do!"

"You can spread it all up and down the river that I'm living here under
an assumed name, and you may tell them anything else--all that is
true--that you think you ought to tell, just as soon as you want to
begin," she said, rising and moving away from him in scorn. "I'll not
help you; I couldn't help you if I would."

Boyle got up, his face in a scowl, and as she retreated toward her tent,
followed her in his peggy, forward-tilting cowboy walk.

"Say," he hailed, unveiling at once all the rudeness of his character,
"come back here a minute and take your medicine!"

She p