had set out on
his errand of exposure with an angry impulsiveness which gave no thought
to details or possibilities. But in some subtle fashion that searching
glance from the passing stranger brought him up with a little mental jerk.
For the first time he remembered that he was playing a lone hand, that the
very nature of his business was likely to rouse the most desperate and
unscrupulous opposition. Considering the value of the stake and the
penalties involved, the present occupant of the Shoe-Bar was likely to use
every means in her power to prevent his accusations from becoming public.
If the fellow who had just passed really was Tex Lynch, Buck had a strong
intuition that he was the sort of a man who could be counted on to take a
prominent hand in the game, and also that he wouldn't be any too
particular as to how he played it.

A mile beyond the draw the trail forked, and Stratton took the left-hand
branch. The grazing hereabouts was poor, and at this time of year
particularly the Shoe-Bar cattle were more likely to be confined to the
richer fenced-in pastures belonging to the ranch. The scenery thus
presenting no points of interest, Buck's thoughts turned to the interview
ahead of him. Marshaling his facts, he planned briefly how he would make
use of them, and finally began to draw scrappy mental pen-pictures of the
usurping Mary Thorne.

She would be tall, probably, and raw-boned--that domineering, "bossy" type
he always associated with women who assumed men's jobs--harsh-voiced and
more than a trifle hard. He dwelt particularly on her hardness, for surely
no other sort of woman could possibly have helped to engineer the crooked
deal which Andrew Thorne and his daughter had so successfully put across.
She would be painfully plain, of course, and doubtless also would wear
knickerbockers like a certain woman farmer he had once met in Texas, smoke
cigarettes constantly, and pack a gun. Having endowed the lady with a few
other disagreeable qualities which pleased him mightily, Buck awoke to the
realization that he was approaching the eastern extremity of the Shoe-Bar
ranch. His eyes brightened, and, dismissing all thoughts of Miss Thorne,
he began to cast interested, appraising glances to right and left as he
rode.

There is little that escapes the eye of the professional ranchman,
especially when he has been absent from his property for more than two
years. Buck Stratton observed quite as much as the average man,