answered slowly.

The hopeful gleam died out of her eyes, and she made an eloquent,
discouraged gesture with both hands.

"You see? What else can I do but let you go? Unless I take every possible
precaution I'll be ruined by these dreadful thieves."

Buck moved his shoulders slightly. "I understand. I'm not kicking. Well, I
won't keep you any longer. Thank you very much for telling me what you
have."

Abruptly he turned away and in the doorway came face to face with Alfred
Manning, who seemed to expect the cow-puncher to step obsequiously aside
and let him pass. But Buck was in no humor to step aside for any one, and
for a silent instant their glances clashed. In the end it was Manning,
flushed and looking daggers, who gave way, and as Stratton passed the open
window a moment later he heard the other's voice raised in an angry
pitch.

"Perfectly intolerable! I tell you, Mary, you ought to have that fellow
arrested."

"I don't mean to do anything of the sort," retorted Miss Thorne.

"But it's your duty. He'll get clean away, and go right on stealing--"

"Please, Alf!" There was a tired break in the girl's voice. "I don't want
to talk any more about it. I've had enough--"

Stratton's lips tightened and he passed on out of hearing. The encounter
with Manning had irritated him, and a glimpse of Lynch he caught through
the kitchen door fanned into a fresh glow his smoldering anger against
the foreman. It was not that he minded in the least the result of the
fellow's plotting. But the method of it, the effrontery of that cowardly,
insolent attempt to blacken and besmirch him with Mary Thorne, made him
more furious each time he thought of it. When he reached the bunk-house
his rage was white hot.

He found Jessup the sole occupant. It was still rather early for quitting,
and Tex must have set the other men to doing odd jobs around the barns and
near-by places.

"What's happened?" demanded Bud, as Buck appeared. "Tex put me to work
oiling harness, but I sneaked off as soon as he was out of sight. I heard
Slim say yuh were fired."

Flinging his belongings together as he talked, Stratton briefly retailed
the essentials of the situation.

"I'm going to saddle up and start for town right away," he concluded. "If
I hang around here much longer I don't know as I can keep my hands off
that double-faced crook."

He added some more man-sized adjectives, to which Bud listened with
complete approval.

"Yuh ain't said h