"Little hoss," he muttered, "we've gone just about as far as we can go without stirrin' up active an' personal troubles. We can't play our hand much longer without folks knowin' what we are doin'. What you an' me has got to do is plan things, choose th' leads, an' then stick to 'em in spite of h--l an' high water. An' we ought to figger on doin' somethin' solid for th' SV. Any fool can tear around an' smash things, an' we've got to do that; but you an' me ain't satisfied with no worthless pile of rubbish; we got to smash so we can pan that rubbish, sort of, an' get somethin' out of it. An' when a feller pans free an' wide on a cattle range, he most likely will get cows. What else can he get? A man rocks gravel an' gets gold, if there's any gold in it. A puncher, rockin' ranches, ought to get cows. There ain't nothin' else _to_ get. So we got to get cows, an' now we got to find out how many cows we want. We can't find out exact, but we can do better than guess at it. There's a limit to this pannin' of ours--an' it ought to be what was lost an' stolen. There's only one place where we can find that out, an' we're ridin' that way now. Havin' decided what we're aimin' for, we'll let it rest an' turn to somethin' mighty close to us, ourselves; somethin' plumb personal, an' terrible riled. "You remember Tex Ewalt, don't you? You ought to, because he said some mighty nice things about you; I was scared he'd turn yore head. Now, Tex was a wise boy; he was amazin' wise. Do you remember what he told young Slim-Shanks, that there Baxter kid, who was all tangled up with tender feelin's? Mebby you don't; but _I_ do. Slim-Shanks, he was fair wallerin' in misery, an' actin' like a sick calf. He hung around that gal's house like a dogie 'round a water hole. She must 'a' got sick of th' sight of him. Every place she looked, there was Slim-Shanks, an' his hope-I-die look. She couldn't get away from th' big calf. Tex never missed anythin', 'specially if it was under his eyes, an' one day young Slim-Shanks got bleatin' to him, moanin' an' groanin' about his busted heart. What did Tex tell him? I'll tell you. He says, slow an' deliberate: 'Slim-Shanks, some you got to rush; others you got to pique--an' th' best way to do that, in most cases, is to let 'em think you can look at 'em, an' not see 'em. It takes nerve--an' not one man in a hundred has got th' nerve. Make 'em keep a-thinkin' of you without chasin' after 'em. Yore medicine ain't no good--you might try th' other.' Now, just because Slim-Shanks didn't have th' nerve ain't sayin' Tex was wrong. I've got to decide which way is best, an' it's tough ridin'. Now you keep right still while I wrestle this thing out," and he became so wrapped up in the problem that he paid no attention to where Pepper was going; and she took him to the vantage point on the valley's rim from whence he had looked down at the posts and their enclosed quicksands; and arriving there, she stopped. Johnny