“Thanky. Glad to. And as my affairs is at present a lady, I’ll thank you to jest trundle this here railroad offspring to the back o’ this here lady—the back, I say—back ain’t front, is it? Wasn’t where I was eddicated. That’s better. And ef you ain’t satisfied, why, I belong to the Three Bars. Ever hear o’ the Three Bars? Ef I’m out, jest leave word with the Boss, will you? He’ll see I git the word. Yes, sir, you ol’ hoss thief, I belong to the Three Bars.” The encounter was not without interested spectators. Louise’s brakeman was grinning broadly at the discomfiture of his fellow-employee. Louise herself had forgotten her predicament in the sudden whirlwind of which she was the innocent storm-centre. The cowboy with the temper, having completely routed the enemy to the immense satisfaction of the onlookers, though why, no one knew exactly, nor what the merits of the case, turned abruptly to Louise. “Are you her?” he asked, with a perceptible cooling of his assertive bravado. “I don’t know,” said Louise, smiling fearlessly at her champion, though inwardly quaking at the intuition that had flashed upon her that this strange, uncouth man had come to take the place of Mary. “The boldness and license of the cowboys,” her aunt had argued. There could be no doubt of the boldness. Would the rest of the statement hold good? “I think maybe I am, though I am Louise Dale, the new court reporter. I expected Miss Mary Williston to meet me.” “Then you are her,” said the man, with renewed cheerfulness, seizing her suit-case and striding off. “Come along. We’ll git some supper afore we start. You’re dead tired, more’n likely. It’ll be moonlight so’t won’t matter ef we are late a gittin’ home.” “Court reporter! I’ll be doggoned!” muttered the brakeman. “The new girl from down East. A pore little white lamb among a pack o’ wolves and coyotes, and homesick a’ready. No wonder! I’ll be takin’ you back to-morrow, I’m thinkin’, young lady.” He didn’t know the “little white lamb” who had come to help Paul Langford and Dick Gordon in their big fight. CHAPTER IV “MAGGOT” An hour prior to this little episode, Jim Munson had sauntered up to the ticket window only to find that the train from the East was forty minutes late. He turned away with a little shrug of relief. It was a foreign role he was playing,—this assumption of the duties of a knight in dancing attendance on strange ladies. Secretly, he chafed under it; outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. He had a reputation to sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor devil. But he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the Boss or the Scribe or the rest of the boys of the Three Bars ranch, who were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.