laughed the slighter of two lads
who, from their close resemblance, could be nothing less than brothers.

"His voice doesn't improve with age; does it, Nort?" asked Bud Merkel,
smiling at his cousins, Norton and Richard Shannon.

"But he means well," declared Nort with a chuckle. "Oh, you Slim!" he
shouted, as a tall lanky individual, mounted on a pony of like
proportions, ambled into view, topping a slight rise of the trail.
"Oh, you Slim!"

The older cowboy--a man, to be exact--who had been about to break forth
into the second, or forty-second verse of his song (there being in all
seventy-two stanzas, so it doesn't much matter which one is
designated)--the older cowboy, I say, paused with his mouth open, and a
blank look on his face. Then he grinned--that is the only word for
it--and cried:

"Well, I'm a second cousin to a ham sandwich! Where'd you fellows come
from?"

"We haven't come--we're just going!" laughed Bud. "We're going over to
see Dad and the folks. How are they all?"

"Oh, they're sittin' pretty! Sittin' pretty!" affirmed Slim Degnan,
with a mingled smile and grin. "How'd you fellows come out with your
spring round-up?"

"Pretty fair," admitted Bud. "A few steers short of what we figured
on, but that's nothing."

"I should say not!" chuckled Slim. "Your paw was a heap sight worse
off'n that."

"Rustlers again?" asked Nort quickly, as he and his brother glanced at
one another. They had not forgotten the stirring times when they were
on the trail of the ruthless men who had raided Diamond X ranch, and
their own cattle range.

"No, nothin' like that," answered Slim easily. "Just natural
depravity, so to speak. Some of 'em ate loco weed and others jest got
too tired of livin' I reckon. But we come out pretty fair. Just got
th' last bunch shipped, an' I'm mighty glad of it."

"Same here!" spoke Dick. "That's why we came over here--on a sort of
vacation."

"I reckon some other folks is headin' this way on th' same sort of
ideas," remarked Slim Degnan, as he rolled a cigarette with one hand, a
trick for which the boys had no use, though they could but admire the
skill of the foreman.

"What do you mean?" asked Bud. "Is Dad going to take a vacation? If
he does--"

"Don't worry, son! Don't worry!" laughed Slim, as he ignited a match
by the simple process of scratching the head with his thumb nail.
"Cattle will have to fetch a heap sight more'n they do now when he
takes a few