"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Bowles, thinking of all the awful things he had heard about the Saints, but discreetly holding his peace. "Will they punish you for running away?" "No," answered Brigham, shaking his head dolefully, "it ain't that--it's the things they make you do. I'm a renegade now--I don't pay tithes or nothin'--but if I settled down on the river I'd have to come in ag'in. Mebbe jist about the time I'm married they summon me fer a mission. Two years to some foreign country to bring in converts to the church--an' who's goin' to take care of my wife?" "Oh!" breathed Bowles sympathetically. "That _is_ bad! Why don't you get married and live somewhere else, then?" "That's jest it," frowned Brigham. "Gal's a Mormon too, and she won't come. So there I am!" "Ah!" said Bowles; and they rode a long time in silence. "That letter was from her," volunteered Brigham, jerking his head back toward the place where they had been camped, and after that he said no more. The old cynical look came into his squinted eyes, and he strung out the cattle methodically until they came to the home ranch. It was four o'clock in the afternoon then, and they lay over until the next day. The Bat Wing bunk-house was hardly a cheery lounging place. Outside of the illustrated magazine literature with which the walls were papered, the library consisted of three books--a boot, spur and saddle catalogue, "Lin McLean," and that classic of the cow camps, "Three Weeks." When the entire outfit was at "the home," Happy Jack was in the habit of reading choice passages of "Three Weeks" to his friends, he being the scholar of the bunch, and closing each selection with the remark: "Well, I reckon that's plain enough for you, ain't it?" And the boys would generally agree that it was. With the memory of Happy Jack still in mind, Bowles took shame to himself and read Owen Wister's "Lin McLean" instead, finding there a tenderfoot on another range who was worse even than himself. As things were coming now, Bowles hardly considered himself a tenderfoot any more. To be sure, he could not rope in the corral; but there were several local punchers in the same fix; and when it came to riding, he still had Wa-ha-lote in his string as a tribute to his skill as a fence jumper. He had also sat out a bucking fit or two when the boys put high-life on his horse; and, taken all in all he was not the worst rider in the outfit, by any means. As a branding hand, also, he was able to do his share; he had learned some of the rudiments of handling cattle; and his face had peeled off and tanned again, leaving him with a complexion in no wise different from that of his bronzed companions. And then, to top it all, he had won the friendship of Brigham, who was so good that he passed for a cowman.