ip were two-fold: he wished to see Buck
Peters, the foreman of the Bar-20 outfit, as he and Buck had punched
cows together twenty years before and were firm friends; the other was
that he wished to get square with Hopalong Cassidy, who had decisively
cleaned him out the year before at poker. Hopalong played either
in great good luck or the contrary, while Frenchy played an even,
consistent game and usually left off richer than when he began, and this
decisive defeat bothered him more than he would admit, even to himself.

The round-up season was at hand and the Bar-20 was short of ropers, the
rumors of fresh gold discoveries in the Black Hills having drawn all the
more restless men north. The outfit also had a slight touch of the gold
fever, and only their peculiar loyalty to the ranch and the assurance
of the foreman that when the work was over he would accompany them, kept
them from joining the rush of those who desired sudden and much wealth
as the necessary preliminary of painting some cow town in all the "bang
up" style such an event would call for. Therefore they had been given
orders to secure the required assistance, and they intended to do so,
and were prepared to kidnap, if necessary, for the glamour of wealth and
the hilarity of the vacation made the hours falter in their speed.

As Frenchy leaned back in his chair in Cowan's saloon, Buckskin, early
the next morning, planning to get revenge on Hopalong and then to
recover his sombrero, he heard a medley of yells and whoops and soon the
door flew open before the strenuous and concentrated entry of a mass
of twisting and kicking arms and legs, which magically found their
respective owners and reverted to the established order of things.

When the alkali dust had thinned he saw seven cow-punchers sitting on
the prostrate form of another, who was earnestly engaged in trying to
push Johnny Nelson's head out in the street with one foot as he voiced
his lucid opinion of things in general and the seven in particular.
After Red Connors had been stabbed in the back several times by the
victim's energetic elbow he ran out of the room and presently returned
with a pleased expression and a sombrero full of water, his finger
plugging an old bullet hole in the crown.

"Is he any better, Buck?" Anxiously inquired the man with the reservoir.

"About a dollar's worth," replied the foreman. "Jest put a little right
here," he drawled as he pulled back the collar of the unfort