pretty way she had of doing it
when she spoke in negation, like an earnest child.

"Maybe the next day?"

"I expect I may come then, Duke--or what is your real name?"

"Jeremiah. Jerry, if you like it better."

She pursed her lips in comical seriousness, frowning a little as if
considering it weightily. Then she looked at him in frank comradeship,
her dark eyes serious, nodding her head.

"I'll just call you Duke."

He left her with the feeling that he had known her many years. Blood
between them? What was blood? Thicker than water? Nay, impalpable as
smoke.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RIVALRY OF COOKS

Taterleg said that he would go to Glendora that night with Lambert, when
the latter announced he was going down to order cars for the first
shipment of cattle.

"I've been layin' off to go quite a while," Taterleg said, "but that
scrape you run into kind of held me around nights. You know, that feller
he put a letter in the post office for me, servin' notice I was to keep
away from that girl. I guess he thinks he's got me buffaloed and on the
run."

"Which one of them sent you a letter?"

"Jedlick, dern him. I'm goin' down there from now on every chance I get
and set up to that girl like a Dutch uncle."

"What do you suppose Jedlick intends to do to you?"

"I don't care what he aims to do. If he makes a break at me, I'll lay
him on a board, if they can find one in the Bad Lands long enough to
hold him."

"He's got a bad eye, a regular mule eye. You'd better step easy around
him and not stir him up too quick."

Lambert had no faith in the valor of Jedlick at all, but Taterleg would
fight, as he very well knew. But he doubted whether there was any great
chance of the two coming together with Alta Wood on the watch between
them. She'd pat one and she'd rub the other, soothing them and drawing
them off until they forgot their wrath. Still, he did not want Taterleg
to be running any chance at all of making trouble.

"You'd better let me take your gun," he suggested as they approached the
hotel.

"I can take care of it," Taterleg returned, a bit hurt by the
suggestion, lofty and distant in his declaration.

"No harm intended, old feller. I just didn't want you to go pepperin'
old Jedlick over a girl that's as fickle as you say Alta Wood is."

"I ain't a-goin' to pull a gun on no man till he gives me a good reason,
Duke, but if he _gives_ me the reason, I want to be heeled. I guess I
was a little har