on him. And I'm going to lick that--"

"Mamma! You sure are a rambunctious person when you feel that way,"
Weary made querulous comment; but he rode over with Pink to where the
bug-killer was standing with his long stick held in a somewhat menacing
manner, and once more he held Pink's horse for him.

Pink was gone longer this time, and he came back with a cut lip and a
large lump on his forehead; the bug-killer had thrown a small rock with
the precision which comes of much practice--such as stoning disobedient
dogs, and the like--and, when Pink rushed at him furiously, the herder
caught him very neatly alongside the head with his stick. These little
amenities serving merely to whet Pink's appetite for battle, he stopped
long enough to thrash that particular herder very thoroughly and to his
own complete satisfaction.

"Well, I guess I'm ready to go on now," he observed, dimpling rather
one-sidedly as he got back on his horse.

"I thought maybe you'd want to whip the dogs, too," Weary told him
dryly; which was the nearest he came to expressing any disapproval
of the incident. Weary was a peace-loving soul, whenever peace was
compatible with self-respect; and it would never have occurred to him to
punish strange men as summarily as Pink had done.

"I would, if the dogs were half as ornery as the men," Pink retorted.
"Say, they hang together like bull snakes and rattlers, don't they? If
they was human, they'd have helped each other out--but nothing doing! Do
you reckon a man could ride up to a couple of our bunch, and thrash one
at a time without the other fellow having something to say about it?" He
turned in the saddle and looked back. "So help me, Josephine, I've got a
good mind to go back and lick them again, for not hanging together like
they ought to." But the threat was an idle one, and they went on to
Denson's, Weary still with that anxious look in his eyes, and Pink quite
complacent over his exploit.

In Denson coulee was an unwonted atmosphere of activity; heretofore the
place had been animated chiefly by young Densons engaged in the pursuit
of pleasure, but now a covered buggy, evidently just arrived, bore mute
witness to the new order of things. There were more horses about the
place, a covered wagon or two, three or four men working upon the
corral, and, lastly, there was one whom Weary recognized the moment he
caught sight of him.

"Looks like a sheep outfit, all right," he said somberly. "And, if tha