the settlement to be made between Brenchfield and
himself.

Yes!--Vernock was the place of all places for Phil Ralston.

He went back to the hotel, dressed himself in the best clothes he had,
paid his score and packed his grips. And that night he was speeding
eastward.

On the following afternoon he landed at the comparatively busy little
ranching town of Vernock, where he had decided to try out his
fortune.

He left his grips at the station and sauntered down the Main Street.
There were few people about at the time and all were evidently too
intent on their own particular business to pay much attention to a
new arrival. He passed a commodious-looking hotel, built of wood,
typically western in style, with hitching posts at the side of the
road, a broad sidewalk and a few steps up to a wide veranda which led
into an airy and busy saloon.

For want of anything better to occupy his attention, Phil strolled in.
He called for a glass of beer at the bar. While waiting service, he
took in his surroundings.

Several men were lounging at the bar talking loudly, smoking, spitting
carelessly and drinking. At a table, near the window, a long-legged,
somewhat wistful-looking young man, with prominent front teeth and a
heavy mop of auburn hair, was sitting in front of a glass of liquor,
gazing lazily into the vacant roadway. From an adjoining room off the
saloon rough voices rose every now and again in argument over a poker
game which was in progress there between a number of men who appeared
to be in off some of the neighbouring ranches.

As Phil surveyed the scene, a man galloped up to the hotel entrance,
tossed his reins over his horse's head and jingled loudly into the
saloon. He was clean-cut, dark-skinned and red-haired, and walked with
a swinging gait. He shouted the time of day to the bar-tender, as he
kept on into the inner room where the card game was in progress.

Phil guessed him for the foreman of the cattlemen inside and
conjectured that he had been giving them some instructions regarding
their departure, but passed the incident from his mind as quickly as
it had cropped up: and he was still slowly refreshing himself when
half a dozen rough-looking men tumbled out of the card-room.

"Come on fellows! Drinks all round, Mack! Don't miss a damned man in
the room. Everybody's havin' one on me."

The speaker hitched up his trousers, blew out a mouthful of chewing
tobacco and waved his arm invitingly.

The cou