s?"

"Sure," whispered Kelso.

"Where's Masten stayin'?"

"With Chavis--in the shack. He's been there right along, except," he
finished, with a grim attempt at humor, "when he's been rushin' that
biscuit-shooter in Lazette."

Five minutes later, standing near one of the wheels of the chuck-wagon,
gazing somberly at the men, who were carrying Kelso away, Randerson spoke
grimly to Owen, who was standing beside him.

"Pickett an' then Kelso! Both of them was sure bad enough. But I reckon
Masten's got them both roped an' hog-tied for natural meanness." He
turned to Owen. "I reckon I had to do it, old man," he said, a quaver in
his voice.

"Buck up, Wrecks!" Owen slapped him on the shoulder, and turned toward
the men.

Randerson watched him, but his thoughts were elsewhere. "I reckon she'd
have wanted it different," he said to himself.

CHAPTER XIX

READY GUN AND CLEAN HEART

Uncle Jepson understood the cow-punchers because he understood human
nature, and because he had a strain of the wild in him that had been
retained since his youth. Their simplicity, their directness, had been
his own; their frankness and generosity, their warm, manly impulses--all
reminded him of the days before age, with its accompanying conservatism
of thought and action, had placed a governor upon them. They understood
him, too, recognizing him as their kind. Blair, especially, had taken a
fancy to him, and therefore it was not many days after the shooting of
Kelso that Uncle Jepson got the story, with all its gruesome details,
from his lips.

The tale was related in strictest confidence, and Uncle Jepson did not
repeat it.

But the main fact, that Randerson had killed another man in his outfit,
found its way to Ruth's ears through the medium of a roaming puncher who
had stopped for an hour at the ranchhouse. Ruth had confirmed the news
through questioning several Flying W men, and, because of their
reluctance to answer her inquiries, their expressionless faces, she
gathered that the shooting had not met with their approval. She did not
consider that they had given her no details, that they spoke no word of
blame or praise. She got nothing but the bare fact--that Randerson's gun
had again wrought havoc.

She had not seen Masten. A month had slipped by since the day of his
departure, when she got a note from him, by messenger, from Lazette,
saying that his business was no