during
the ride.

"I reckon Kelton must have been loco to try to raise cattle in a
God-forsaken hole like this," he said with a sneer.

"That he was foolish enough to do so will result to our advantage," she
replied.

"Meanin' what?"

"That we will be able to buy what cattle we want more cheaply than we
would were Kelton's range what it should be," she returned, watching
his face.

He looked at her vindictively. "You're one of them kind of humans that
like to take advantage of a man's misfortune," he said.

"That is all in the viewpoint," she defended. "I didn't bring
misfortune to Kelton. And I consider that in buying his cattle I am
doing him a favor. I am not gloating over the opportunity--it is
merely business."

"Why didn't you offer Kelton the Lazy Y range?" he said with a twisting
grin.

She could not keep the triumph out of her voice. "I did," she
answered. "He wouldn't take it because he didn't like you--doesn't
like you. He told me that he knew you when you were a boy and you
weren't exactly his style."

Thus eliminated as a conversationalist, and defeated in his effort to
cast discredit upon her, Calumet maintained a sneering silence.

But when they rode up to the Diamond K ranchhouse, he flung a parting
word at her.

"I reckon you can go an' talk cattle to your man, Kelton," he said.
"I'm afraid that if he goes gassin' to me I'll smash his face in."

He rode back to the horse corral, which they had passed, to look again
at a horse inside which had attracted his attention.

The animal was glossy black except for a little patch of white above
the right fore-fetlock; he was tall, rangy, clean-limbed,
high-spirited, and as Calumet sat in the saddle near the corral gate
watching him he trotted impudently up to the bars and looked him over.
Then, after a moment, satisfying his curiosity, he wheeled, slashed at
the gate with both hoofs, and with a snort, that in the horse language
might have meant contempt or derision, cavorted away.

Calumet's admiring glance followed him. He sat in the saddle for half
an hour, eyeing the horse critically, and at the end of that time,
noting that Betty had returned to the ranchhouse with Kelton, probably
having looked at some of the stock she had come to see--Calumet had
observed on his approach that the cattle corral was well filled with
white Herefords--he wheeled Blackleg and rode over to them.

"Mr. Kelton has offered me four hundred head of cattl