en Buddy was fifteen, four thoroughbred cows and four calves
disappeared mysteriously from the home ranch just before the calves had
reached branding age. Buddy rode the hills and the valleys every spare
minute for two weeks in search of them, and finally, away over the ridge
where an undesirable neighbor was getting a start in cattle, Buddy found
the calves in a fenced field with eight calves belonging--perhaps--to
the undesirable neighbor.

Buddy did not ride down to the ranch and accuse the neighbor of stealing
the calves. Instead, he painstakingly sought a weak place in the fence,
made a very accidental looking hole and drove out the twelve calves,
took them over the ridge to Tomahawk and left them in a high, mountain
meadow pretty well surrounded by matted thickets. There, because there
was good grass and running water, the calves seemed quite as happy as in
the field.

Then Buddy hurried home and brought a branding iron and a fresh horse,
and by working very hard and fast, he somehow managed to plant a deep
tomahawk brand on each one of the twelve calves. He returned home very
late and very proud of himself, and met his father face to face as
he was putting away the iron. Explanations and a broken harness strap
mingled painfully in Buddy's memory for a long time afterwards, but the
full effect of the beating was lost because Buddy happened to hear Bob
Birnie confide to mother that the lad had served the old cattle-thief
right, and that any man who could start with one thoroughbred cow and
in four years have sufficient increase from that cow to produce eight
calves a season, ought to lose them all.

Buddy had not needed his father's opinion to strengthen his own
conviction that he had performed a worthy deed and one of which no man
need feel ashamed. Indeed, Buddy considered the painful incident of
the buggy strap a parental effort at official discipline, and held no
particular grudge against his father after the welts had disappeared
from his person.

Wherefore Bud, the man, held unswervingly to the ethical standard of
Buddy the boy. If Burroback Valley was scheming to fleece a stranger at
their races and rob him by force if he happened to win, then Bud felt
justified in getting every dollar possible out of the lot of them. At
any rate, he told himself, he would do his darndest. It was plain enough
that Pop was trying to make an opportunity to talk confidentially, but
with a dozen men on the place it was easy