ht of the Southwest his eyes had picked the rider out of the surrounding landscape nearly an hour before. For at least one f

t, son," sugg

g steak, took one whiff of the coffee and slid from the

" the boy explained. "He

dro's appetite was blunted. The line-rider lig

does he

the flicker of an eyelash did the line-rider show that this news meant anything to him. It was promotion-better pay, a better chan

nless I'm 'way off, the Dinsmore gang are operatin' through it. I 'most caught one red-handed the

slouched in a chair tilted back against the wall, a run-down heel of his boot hitched in the rung. The wrinkled coat he wore hung on him like a sack, and one leg of

n horseback they might be kings of the earth, but out of the saddle they rolled like sailors. Clint Wadley notice

erdict, one he had arrived at after

d itself in the greeting of the "old man." He grunted

esence by saying: "You s

bust his laig. Think you can take

s,

ny of 'em will you lose on the way? How sorry will they lo

little thing, with a slender throat that carried the small head like the stem of a rose. Dark, long-lashed eyes, eager and bu

ho!" she

you-all see I'm talkin' business?" But the line-rider

sight of Roberts, who had been half hidde

n't know,"

erts, one of my trail foremen. Roberts-my daughter Ramona

the girl. She knew that for her at le

ice of the South. "I've been away too long, but now I'm back I

ce he had been in the neighborhood, both of them had been a good deal of the time in Tennessee at school, and Jack did not come to the ranch-house once in three months. It was hard to believe t

e you're here you might as well go throu

then answered her own question. "Clothes-and money to bu

l. "Do you call yoreself a woman-a little bit of

grass. And it's much more likely, sir, that I'll break you-as

on her heel and vani

an followed her. It was an easy gue

. He was a trifle crisper to balance the effect of his new foreman hav

strays, fat, an' in good condition, an' you won't need to go back to line-ridin

," the cowboy answered. "An'

g," snapped his chief. "We'll make the g