nny, over at
the Rocking-R?"

"He's white," returned Bud promptly. "No squarer ranch-boss around the
country. I'd of gone there instead of the Shoe-Bar, only they was full up.
What was yuh thinkin' of--bracin' him for a job?"

"Not exactly, though I'd like Lynch to think I'd been taken on there. Do
you suppose, if I put Tenny wise to what I was after, that he'd let me
have a cayuse and pack-horse, and stake me to enough grub to keep me a
week or two in the mountains back of the Shoe-Bar?"

"He might, especially when he knows you're buckin' Tex; he never was much
in love with Lynch." Jessup paused, eyeing his companion curiously. "Say,
Buck," he went on quickly, "What makes yuh so keen about this, anyhow? Yuh
ain't no deputy sheriff, or anythin' like that, are yuh?"

For a moment Stratton was taken aback by the unexpectedness of the
question. He had come to regard Jessup and himself so completely at one in
their desire to penetrate the mystery of Lynch's shady doings that it had
never occurred to him that his intense absorption in the situation might
strike Bud as peculiar. It was one thing to behave as Bud was doing,
especially as he frankly had the interest of Mary Thorne at heart, and
quite another to throw up a job and plan to carry on an unproductive
investigation from a theoretical desire to bring to justice a crooked
foreman whom he had never seen until a few weeks ago.

"Why, of course not," parried Buck. "What gave you that notion?"

"I dunno exactly. I s'pose mebbe it's the way you're plannin' to give yore
time to it without pay or nothin'. There won't be a darn cent in it for
yuh, even if yuh do land Tex in the pen."

"I know that," and Buck smiled; "but I'm a stubborn cuss when I get
started on anything. Besides, I love Tex Lynch well enough to want to see
him get every mite that's comin' to him. I've got a little money saved up,
and I'll get more fun spending it this way than any other I can think
of."

"There's somethin' in that," agreed Jessup. "Golly, Buck! I wisht I could
go along with yuh. I never was much on savin', but I could manage a couple
of weeks without a job."

Stratton hesitated. "I'd sure like it, kid," he answered. "It would be a
whole lot pleasanter for me, but I'm wondering if you wouldn't do more
good there on the Shoe-Bar. With nobody at all to cross him, there's no
tellin' what Lynch might try and pull off. Besides, it seems to me
somebody ought to be there to sort of look aft