ly there wasn't going to be any
chance."

The bearded man's laugh was a deep-chested rumbling suggestive of rocks
rolling down a declivity.

"Lordy gracious!" he chuckled. "If you was to get a leg over a bronc',
and the bronc' should find it out--Say, I've got a li'l' blue horse out
on my place in the Antelopes that'd plumb give his ears to have you try
it; he shore would. You take my advice, and don't you go huntin' a job
night-ridin' in the greasewood hills. Don't you do it!"

"I assure you I hadn't thought of doing it for a permanency. But just
for a bit of adventure, if the chance should offer while I'm in the
notion. I believe I'd take it. I haven't ridden a cow-pony for fourteen
years, but I don't believe I've lost the knack of it."

"Ho!" said the big man. "Then you ain't as much of a tenderfoot as you
look to be. Shake!" and he held out a hand as huge as a bear's paw.
Following the hand-grip he grew confidential. "'Long in the afternoon I
stuck my head in at the door and saw you chewin' the rag with a
thin-faced old nester that couldn't set still in his chair while he
talked. Know him?"

"Not at all," said Blount promptly. "He has the section opposite mine,
and he got on at Omaha."

"Well, I wouldn't want to know him if I was you," was the bearded man's
comment. Then: "Tryin' to get you to invest in some o' his properties?"

"Oh, no."

"Well, he will, if he gets a chance. He'd go furder'n that; he'd nail
you up to the cross and skin you alive if there was any money in it for
him. His name's Simon Peter, and it ort to be Judas. I know him down to
the ground!"

"Simon Peter?" said Blount inquiringly.

"Ya-as; Simon Peter Hathaway. And my name's Griggs; Griggs, of the
Antelopes, back o' Carnadine--if anybody should ask you who give you
your pointer on Simon Peter Judas. I don't blacklist no man in the dark,
and I've said a heap more to that old ratter's face than I've ever said
behind his back. Ump! him a-wrigglin' in that chair you're settin' in
and tryin' to fix up some way to skin you! Don't tell me! I know blame'
well what he was tryin' to do."

Blount listened and was interested, not so much in the bit of gossip as
in the big, red-faced ranchman, who so evidently had a grudge to pay
off.

"I am not likely to have any dealings with Mr. Hathaway," he rejoined.
"And I must do him the bare justice of saying that he wasn't trying to
sell me anything. The shoe was on the other foot. He seemed to be a