g man," exclaimed the Southerner.

Sewall smiled at him. "I am," he said. "You can't find a pleasanter
man anywhere round." Which was the essential truth about Bill Sewall.

Of all Roosevelt's friends up and down the river, Sewall's nephew,
Will Dow, was possibly the one who had the rarest qualities of
intellect and spirit. He had a poise and a winsome lovableness that
was not often found in that wild bit of country combined with such
ruggedness of character. He had a droll and altogether original sense
of humor, and an imagination which struck Roosevelt as extraordinary
in its scope and power and which disported itself in the building of
delightful yarns.

"He was always a companion that was sought wherever he went," said
Bill Sewall. "There are men who have the faculty of pleasing and
creating mirth and he was one of that kind."

Rowe was a different sort, of coarser fiber, but himself not without
charm. He was a natural horseman, fearless to recklessness, an
excellent worker, and a fighting man with a curious streak of
gentleness in him that revolted against the cruelty of the
branding-iron. Most men accepted the custom of branding cattle and
horses as a matter of course. There was, in fact, nothing to do save
accept it, for there was no other method of indicating the ownership
of animals which could be reasonably relied on to defy the ingenuity
of the thieves. Attempts to create opinion against it were regarded as
sentimental and pernicious and were suppressed with vigor.

But Rowe had plenty of courage. "Branding cattle is rotten," he
insisted, in season and out of season; adding on one occasion to a
group of cowpunchers standing about a fire with branding-irons in
their hands, "and you who do the branding are all going to hell."

"Aw," exclaimed a cowboy, "there ain't no hell!"

"You watch," Rowe retorted. "You'll get there and burn just as that
there cow."

In comparison to the lower reaches of the Little Missouri where
Elkhorn Ranch was situated, the country about the Maltese Cross was
densely populated. Howard Eaton, eight or ten miles away on Beaver
Creek, was Elkhorn's closest neighbor to the north; "Farmer" Young,
the only man in the Bad Lands who had as yet attacked the problem of
agriculture in that region, was the nearest neighbor to the south. Six
or eight miles beyond Farmer Young lived some people named Wadsworth.

Wadsworth was an unsocial being whom no one greatly liked. He had been
the fi