f an hour later Grant, having returned, was talking baseball with
several fellows who had gathered in a group near Stickney's store, when
Rackliff sauntered up.

"Just a word with you, Mr. Cowpuncher," said Herbert in a loud voice.
"You applied several objectionable adjectives to me a while ago, and
now I want to tell you just what I think about you. You're nothing but
a common, low-bred, swaggering bluffer, as the blind dubs around here
are due to find out. You think you're a baseball pitcher. Excuse me
while I laugh in my sleeve. You're the biggest case of egotistical
jackassism it has ever been my luck to encounter. Next Saturday, when
you get up against a real pitcher who can pitch, you'll look cheaper
than thirty cents."

Grant surveyed the speaker with mingled amusement and disdain.

"Have you got that dose of bile out of your system?" he asked. "If
it's all over, go lie down somewhere and forget yourself. That will be
a relief. Being ashamed all the time sure must get tiresome."

Herbert lost his head at once. "You're a duffer and a bluffer!" he
shouted shrilly. "How any decent, refined girl can have anything to do
with you I can't imagine. It just shows that Lela Barker is----"

He got no further, for, brushing one of the fellows aside, Grant caught
the speaker by the throat and stopped him. His face dark, the Texan
shook Rackliff until his teeth rattled.

"Shoot your mouth off about me as much as you please, you miserable
sneak," he grated; "but don't you dare ring in the name of any decent
girl unless you are thirsting to get the worst walloping of your life!"

Rod's eyes blazed and he was truly terrible. Once before the boys had
seen him look like that, and then they had realized for the first time
that it was the young Texan's uncontrollable temper that he feared and
which had made him, by persistent efforts to avoid personal encounters,
appear like a coward. There was not a cowardly drop of blood in
Grant's body, but experience and the record of his fighting father had
taught him to fear himself.

Even now the fact that he let himself go sufficiently to lay hands on
Rackliff seemed to spur him on, and, still shaking the limp and
helpless fellow, he maintained his hold on the city youth's neck until
Herbert's eyes began to bulge and his face grew purple.

Suddenly another lad pushed his way through the circle and seized Grant
by the shoulders:

"Lul-let up on that!" he cried, his voi