g a loud voice to the silent struggle of
the two men, who continued pleasant, careless with each other.

But when Nash stepped across the room behind Bard, the latter turned and
was busy with the folding of his blankets at the foot of his bunk, his
face toward the cowpuncher and when Bard, slipping off his belt, fumbled
at his holster, Nash was instantly busy with the cleaning of his own
gun.

The cattleman, having removed his boots, his hat, and his belt, was
ready for bed, and slipped his legs under the blankets. He stooped and
picked up his lariat, which lay coiled on the floor beside him.

"People gets into foolish habits on the range," he said, thumbing the
strong rope curiously, and so doing, spreading out the noose.

"Yes?" smiled Bard, and he also sat up in his bunk.

"It's like a kid. Give him a new toy and he wants to take it to bed with
him. Ever notice?"

"Surely."

"That's the way with me. When I go to bed nothin' matters with me except
that I have my lariat around. I generally like to have it hangin' on a
nail at the head of my bunk. The fellers always laugh at me, but I can't
help it; makes me feel more at home."

And with that, still smiling at his own folly in a rather shamefaced
way, he turned in the blankets and dropped the big coil of the lariat
over a nail which projected from the boards just over the head of his
bunk. The noose was outermost and could be disengaged from the nail by a
single twist of the cowpuncher's hand as he lay passive in the bunk.

On this noose Bard cast a curious eye. To cityfolk a piece of rope is a
harmless thing with which one may make a trunk secure or on occasion
construct a clothes line on the roof of the apartment building, or in
the kitchen on rainy Mondays.

To a sailor the rope is nothing and everything at once. Give a seaman
even a piece of string and he will amuse himself all evening making
lashings and knots. A piece of rope calls up in his mind the stout lines
which hold the masts steady and the yards true in the gale, the
comfortable cable which moors the ship at the end of the dreary voyage,
and a thousand things between.

To the Westerner a rope is a different thing. It is not so much a useful
material as a weapon. An Italian, fighting man to man, would choose a
knife; a Westerner would take in preference that same harmless piece of
rope. In his hands it takes on life, it gains a strange and sinister
quality. One instant it lies passive, or slowl