ings like that. I knowed he was batty, like so many people is,
about Western things--not that Western men is any different from anybody
else, though a lot of people think they are.

Now I figured that the place he'd make a break to was, like enough, the
range. He'd told me he knowed the Circle Arrow, too, his boss being a
whole lot interested in the Circle Arrow.

I put one thing together with another; and, without saying anything to
Old Man Wright about it, I bought a ticket for the Yellow Bull country
and pulled out for there as fast as I could go.

It was a good bet. When I got to the station for our old ranch, below
Cody, forty miles from where our ranch was when we lived there, there
wasn't very many people around the station that I knew. A good many new
men was there, with wide hats, and leggings on their legs, and breeches
that buttons on the side--folks that had come out West to be right
Western. Most of 'em come out to raise bananas on the Yellow Bull and be
gentlemen farmers, I reckon.

I looks around among these people for a good while. None of them paid
much attention to me. At last I seen him. Yes; it was that hired man. He
was getting ready to drive out of town with a pair of mules hitched to a
buckboard. He was fixing in some boxes and things. I knowed him in a
minute.

But where was she? I waited to see if Bonnie Bell would come out
anywhere; but she didn't.

I walked over to him; and he seen me standing there looking at him just
as he was going to pull out. I went on over and got onto the seat with
him.

"Drive right on straight out of town," says I, quiet. "Don't say
anything. Just act like nothing had happened," says I.

Under my coat I pushed the muzzle of my gun into his ribs. He looked
straight ahead and done what I told him to. If he was scared bad he
didn't let on.

"I haven't got any gun," says he after a while. "I don't pack one."

"I haven't packed one for years myself," says I. "Sometimes a man has
to pack one for coyotes and such things," says I.

He got kind of red in his face, but he didn't say anything.

"I'm just that kind of a man--when it comes to a show-down I don't care
what happens," says I. "And I reckon you see it's a show-down now. Tell
me where she is."

"She's out at our place," says he; "forty miles or so--you know where it
is. I've got the Arrow Head Spring homestead; I bought it a while ago.
I've got a few cows--not many. You see," says he, "I've saved a litt