ars. What license have you ever
had to think I'd leave a kid like her for the 'Paches to play with?" The
hard eyes of the outlaw challenged a refutation of his claim.

"None in the world, Homer. You're game. Nobody ever denied you guts. An'
you're a better man than I thought you were."

Dinsmore splattered the face of a rock with tobacco juice and his
stained teeth showed in a sardonic grin.

"I've got a white black heart," he jeered.

CHAPTER XLII

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Rescued and rescuers rode out of the canon as soon as the Apaches had
been driven away. Nobody suggested that the Indians who had been killed
in the surprise attack be buried. The bodies were left lying where they
had fallen. For in those days no frontiersman ever buried a dead
redskin. If the body happened to be inconveniently near a house, a
mounted cowboy roped one foot and dragged it to a distance. Those were
the years when all settlers agreed that the only good Indian was a dead
Indian. The Indian wars are over now, and a new generation can safely
hold a more humane view; but old-timers in the Panhandle will tell you
to-day that the saying was literally true.

The little group of riders drew out of the gorge and climbed the shale
slide to the plain above. Roberts rode knee to knee with Dinsmore. On
the other side of the outlaw was Jumbo. The man between them still
carried his rifle and his revolver, but he understood without being told
that he was a prisoner.

Wadley dropped back from his place beside Ramona and ranged up beside
the officer.

"What are you aimin' to do with him, Jack?" he asked in a low voice.

"I'm goin' to turn him over to Cap Ellison."

The cattleman pondered that awhile before he continued. "'Mona has been
tellin' me about you an' her, Jack. I ain't got a word to say--not a
word. If you're the man she wants, you're sure the man she'll get. But I
want to tell you that you're a lucky young scamp. You don't deserve her.
I've got to see the man yet that does."

"We're not goin' to quarrel about that, Mr. Wadley," agreed Jack. "I'm
nothin' but a rough cowboy, an' she's the salt of the earth. I don't see
what she sees in me."

"H'm!" grunted the owner of the A T O, and looked at the lithe, brown,
young fellow, supple as a whip and strong as tested steel. It was not
hard to understand what a girl saw in him. "Glad you got sense enough to
know that."

"I'm not a plumb fool, you know."

Clint changed the s