A couple of men horned in between them. Everybody in the crew liked Charlie Shaw. They respected Duffy, even if they didn’t love him. No one wanted to see a fuss over nothing. And they could see the making of a powder fog in that unexpected clash born of irritation and a loose tongue. They twisted Charlie Shaw about and spoke soothingly to him. While they strove with his outraged dignity, Elmer Duffy, exercising uncommonly good judgment, mounted his horse and issued orders. Thereafter Charlie could only let it go as it stood, or make himself ridiculous by insisting on a ruction with a man who patently desired to avoid one. Duffy could indicate his distaste without having his nerve questioned. But when the dozen riders were bobbing away in a row, Charlie sat on his horse, disconsolate, indignant and still resentful. “Darn his hide,” he reflected. “I was just about to tangle with him, I guess. By gosh, I’ll make him sing a different tune yet. Bonehead? Huh! Thinks I don’t know enough to come in out of the rain. Just because I pushed him over some beefed steers. Gosh darn him, I _will_ show him.” Just how, Charlie hadn’t the remotest idea. The present occasion did not look particularly auspicious. The drama of an old range song flitted unpleasantly through Charlie’s mind: Heaps of fun in the summertime, Pockets full of gold. But when you’re broke in the wintertime, Oh, mister, ain’t it cold! A raw October wind whistled mournfully across Lonesome Prairie. Charlie thought regretfully of the celebrated poker game in which he had recently dropped practically a summer’s wages. Round-up was nearly over. The big outfits seldom took on men in the fall. Oh--well. But he would certainly show Elmer Duffy he could do something besides taking life as a perpetual joke. Even a natural clown has his serious moments. * * * * * Darkness on the plains is like darkness on the sea. If the stars are hidden there is no guiding mark--nothing but an immensity of shrouded silence in which a rider is like a ship without a compass. Yet men cast away at sea in open boats win to a landfall by day or night. Men cross the plains when night spreads her ebony wings and do not miss their destination. Each has his own resources of location and direction; the mariner by dead reckoning, based on observation of wind and heaving swells at sundown, the plainsman by his knowledge of the roll of the ground and the directional trend of gently undulating slopes. The rider feels these under the feet of his horse, as the seaman feels the lift and fall of his vessel.