As they looked at the slim, vital girl confronting him with such passionate and feminine ferocity, the eyes of the foreman softened. All her life she had been a part of his. He had held her on his knee, a crowing baby, while her dimpled fingers clung to his rough coat or explored his unshaven face. He had fished her out of an irrigation ditch when she was three. He had driven her to school when for the first time she started on that great adventure. It had been under his direction that she had learned to ride, to fish, to shoot. He loved her as though she had been flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. It was a delight to him to be bullied by her and to serve her whims. “I renig,” he said. “Clint never told me the boy done that. I had it doped out he was just savin’ his own hide. But I’ll take it all back if it’s like you say. Shake, son.” The tramp did not refuse to grip the big brown hand thrust at him. Nor did he accept the proffered alliance. By a fraction of a second he forestalled the foreman by stooping to knot a broken lace in one of the gaping shoes. Cig, who had been edging closer, gave Tug a rancorous look. “I ain’t forgettin’ this,” he promised. “I’ll get youse good some day for rappin’ on me.” “He didn’t tell on you. Some of my men brought him here in the gather like we did you,” Forbes explained. “Wot’ell youse givin’ me? He rapped. That’s wot he done, the big stiff. An’ I’ll soitainly get him right for it.” “That kind of talk ain’t helpin’ you any,” the foreman said. “If you got any sense, you’ll shut yore trap an’ take what’s comin’.” “I’ll take it. Don’t youse worry about that. You’d better kill me while youse are on the job, for I’ll get you, too, sure as I’m a mont’ old.” Reed drove up in the old car he used for a runabout. He killed the engine, stepped down, and came up to the group by the porch. “See you rounded ’em up, Lon.” “Yep. Found ’em in the cottonwoods acrost the track at Wild Horse.” The ranchman’s dominant eyes found Tug. “Howcome you here?” he asked. The gay-cat looked at him in sullen, resentful silence. The man’s manner stirred up in the tramp a flare of opposition. “Dusty brought him here. I want to tell you about that, Dad,” the girl said. “Later.” He turned to Tug. “I want a talk with you--got a proposition to make you. See you later.” “Not if I see you first,” the ragged nomad replied insolently. “I never did like bullies.” The ranchman flushed angrily, but he put a curb on his temper. He could not afford to indulge it since he was so much in this youth’s debt. Abruptly he turned away. “Bring the other two to the barn,” he ordered Forbes. “We’ll have a settlement there.” York shuffled forward, in a torment of fear. “See here, mister. I ain’t got a thing to do with this. Honest to Gawd, I ain’t. Ask Tug. Ask the young lady. I got respeck for women, I have. You wouldn’t do dirt to an old ’bo wot never done you no harm, would you, boss?”