t to remember, I wouldn't pass on no hand like
you've got. If I wanted a girl right bad, Rowdy, I'd wait till I got
refused before I'd quit."

"Seems to me you've changed your politics lately," Rowdy retorted. "A
while back you was cussing the whole business; and now you're worse than
an old maid aunt. Pink, you may not be wise to the fact, but you sure
are an inconsistent little devil."

"Are yuh going t' hunt Harry up and--"

"I thought I told you to drop that."

"Did yuh? All right, then--only I hope yuh didn't leave your gun packed
away in your bed," he insinuated.

"You can take a look to-night, if you want to."

Pink laughed in a particularly infectious way he had, and, before he
quite knew it, Rowdy was laughing, also. After that the world did not
look quite so forlorn as it had, nor the day's work so distasteful. So
Pink, having accomplished his purpose, was content to turn the subject.

"There's old Liney"--he pointed her out to Rowdy--"fresh as a
meadow-lark. I had a big grouch against her yesterday, just because she
batted her eyes and kept putting one foot ahead uh the other. I could
'a' killed her. But she's all right, that old girl. The way she led out
down that black coulee last night wasn't slow! Say, she's an ambitious
old party. I wish you was riding point with me, Rowdy. The Silent One
talks just about as much as that old cow. He sure loves to live up to
his rep."

"Oh, go on to work," Rowdy admonished. "You make me think of a magpie."
All the same, he looked after him with smiling lips, and eyes that
forgot their gloom. He even whistled while he helped round up the
scattered herd, ready for that last day's drive.

Every man in the outfit comforted himself with the thought that it
was the last day's drive. After long weeks of trailing lean herds over
barren, windbrushed hills, the last day meant much to them. Even the
Silent One sang something they had never heard before, about "If Only I
Knew You Were True."

They crossed the Rocking R field, took down four panels of fence, passed
out, and carefully put them up again behind them. Before them stretched
level plain for two miles; beyond that a high, rocky ridge that promised
some trouble with the herd, and after that more plain and a couleee or
two, and then, on a far slope--the reservation.

The cattle were rested and fed, and walked out briskly; the ridge neared
perceptibly. Pink's shrill whistle carried far back down the line and
mingl