did have remarkable eyelashes,
and a man couldn't help looking at them.

After all, Ford's interest was centered chiefly upon his work. They were
going to start the wagons out again to gather the calves for weaning,
and he was absorbed in the endless details which fall upon the shoulders
of the foreman. Even the fascination of a woman's beauty did not follow
him much beyond the bridge.

Mason, hurrying from the feminine atmosphere at the house, found him
seriously discussing with Buddy the diet and general care of Rambler,
who had been moved into a roomy box stall for shelter. Buddy was to
have the privilege of filling the manger with hay every morning after
breakfast, and every evening just before supper. Upon Buddy also
devolved the duty of keeping his drinking tub filled with clean water;
and Buddy was making himself as tall as possible during the conference,
and was crossing his heart solemnly while he promised, wide-eyed, to
keep away from Rambler's heels.

"I never knew him to kick, or offer to; but you stay out of the stall,
anyway. You can fill his tub through that hole in the wall. And you let
Walt rub him down good every day--you see that he does it, Bud! And when
he gets well, I'll let you ride him, maybe. Anyway, I leave him in your
care, old-timer. And it's a privilege I wouldn't give every man. I think
a heap of this horse." He turned at the sound of footsteps, and lowered
an eyelid slowly for Mason's benefit. "Bud's going to have charge of
Rambler while we're gone," he explained seriously. "I want to be sure
he's in good hands."

The two men watched Buddy's departure for the house, and grinned over
the manifest struggle between his haste to tell his mother and Jo, and
his sense of importance over the trust.

"A kid of your own makes up for a whole lot," Mason observed
abstractedly, reaching up to the narrow shelf where he kept his tobacco.
"I wish I had two or three more; they give a man something to work for,
and look ahead and plan for."

Ford, studying his face with narrowed eyelids, was more than ever
thankful that he was not hampered by matrimony.

CHAPTER X

In Which the Demon Opens an Eye and Yawns

A storm held the Double Cross wagons in a sheltered place in the hills,
ten miles from the little town where Ford had spent a night on his way
to the ranch a month before. Mason, taking the inaction as an excuse,
rode home to his family and left Ford to his own devices with no
compun