"I was ranching before you was born," Mr. Poole told him loftily.

"Then why haven't you got a ranch of your own, instead of hoboing it
around, renting places?" Angus demanded.

Mr. Poole reddened and scowled. "I had a blame sight better ranch than
this, but I sold it," he said.

"By your looks I think the sheriff helped you," Angus said. "You look to
me like a man that is too lazy to turn over in bed, like a man that
would sleep in winter and never hear his stock bawling for feed. You
will never have this ranch. If you try to come on it--"

"Angus," Mr. Braden broke in with dignified severity, "you are
forgetting yourself. You must not talk in that way to your elders."

But by this time young Mackay's temper, which had been gradually
rising, was beyond being damped off by a stern voice and dignified
manner.

"I will say what I think," he declared, "to this man Poole, or to you,
or to anybody else, and I will back up what I say the best way I can.
You come here and talk about renting the ranch and selling stock as if I
had nothing to say about it. I tell you, now, it doesn't go. I am
staying here, and so are Jean and Turkey. If you try to put us off, or
put this Poole or anybody else on, there will be trouble you can scoop
up in a bucket."

Garland chose that moment to laugh. Angus turned on him with a scowl. He
was like a young dog cornered by older ones, nervous, snarling, but
quite ready to fight for his bone. He looked Garland in the eye.

"And that goes for you too," he said. "You will buy nothing with the MK
brand from anybody but me. You try to take a single head of my stock off
the range, and you'll do it in the smoke, do you savvy that?"

Garland laughed again, but there was a note of uneasiness in it, for
next to the real "bad man," cold, experienced and deadly, comes the boy,
who, bred in the traditions of the old West, has the recklessness and
hot passions of extreme youth. The history of the West teems with
examples.

"You're making a fool of yourself, kid," he said.

Here Dave Rennie broke the silence which had enwrapped him.

"Oh, I dunno," he observed.

"What have you got to say about it?" Garland demanded.

"I ain't said much so far," Rennie pointed out, "and I ain't goin' to.
Only this: Don't nobody overplay his hand in this game--nobody at all."

"Who are you?" asked Mr. Braden.

"Me? Dave Rennie. I'm workin' for the kid."

"Then," said Mr. Braden, "I fail to see what interest you