ive it a
flare head?"

"Will there be any charge?" ironically repeated the news-man.

"Not for Moyese," smiled the handy man sleepily, "and say, if I were
you, I'd do one of two things, get rid of my conscience or get a tonic
for my nerves."

The telephone rang. The news-man ran to the receiver and a moment
later slammed it back on the hook.

"Old frump, giving namby pamby talks on woman's influence in politics
without votes." The news editor spat aimlessly.

Bat tapped the story of the Rim Rocks with his pencil. "Well," he
asked.

"We'll give this flare."

The news man put heavy underscores in blue beneath the words TEN
THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD, BY THE VALLEY CATTLE ASSOCIATION FOR PROOF OF
THE PERPETRATORS OF LAST NIGHT'S VILE CRIME.

"We'll put this in red! God! The Senator is an artist! I like having
to lick the hand that leashes me."

"And feeds you, eh?" added Bat.

Beneath the flare heading followed a statement of facts (more or less)
to the effect that in an altercation between the drovers of some
outside cattlemen and the herders belonging to the MacDonald ranch, the
sheep herd had been hustled--("I like your alliterations, Bat, it gives
flavor of quality," commented the news-man with a snap of his black
eyes,) too close to the edge of the Rim Rocks with the unintended and
tragical result that several hundred sheep had been shoved over the
battlements. ("What I like specially is what you don't give,"
commented the news-man.)

There was not a word about broken backs and slashed lambs and
disemboweled ewes; nor of what had been found on the Upper Mesas. As a
sort of addendum it was stated that a boy belonging to the Mission
school had lost his life in the melee.

"Anyway, we're in style! Way to tell a thing now adays is to turn all
around it, and not tell anything at all. Auto suggestion, eh, Bat?"

Bat's fat cheeks blew up in the explosion of a bursting paper bag.
"You bet it's auto all right. If you'd heard the old man talking all
the way down on the iniquity of the thing: he kept it going harder than
the buzz wagon."

"Better inform a breathlessly eager public that he's gone to
Washington?"

"Here, I've got that, too! He dictated that straight, 'for the express
purpose of taking up the whole question of eliminating the grazing
areas from the National Forests when it will be possible for the State
authorities to protect the live stock interests,'" Bat handed across
the second it