“Know him? Know Mag? I’d know Mag ef my eyes were full o’ soundin’ cataracts. He’s an old and tried friend o’ mine. The meanest critter the Lord ever let live and that’s a fac’. But the Boss calls ’im his maggot. Seems to actually cherish a kind o’ ’fection for the ornery critter, and says the luck o’ the Three Bar would sort o’ peak and pine ef he should ever git rid o’ the pesky brute. Maybe he’s right. Leastwise, the critter’s his, and when a thing’s yours, why, it’s yours and that’s all there is about it. By cracky, the Boss is some mad! You’d think him and that walleyed, cross-grained son-of-a-gun had been kind and lovin’ mates these many years. Well, I ain’t met up with this ornery critter for some time. Hullo there, Mag! Look kind o’ sneakin’, now, don’t you, wearin’ that outlandish and unbeknownst J R?” Bill Brown thoughtfully surveyed the steer whose ownership was thus so unexpectedly disputed. “You hold him,” insisted Jim. “Ef he ain’t ours, you can send him along with your next shipment, can’t you? What you wobblin’ about? Ain’t afraid the Boss’ll claim what ain’t his, are you, Bill Brown?” “Well, I can’t he’p myself, I guess,” said Brown, in a tone of voice which told plainly of his laudable effort to keep his annoyance in subjection to his good fellowship. “You send Langford down here first thing in the morning. If he says the critter’s his’n, that ends it.” Now that he had convinced his quondam acquaintance, the present shipper, to his entire satisfaction, Jim glanced at his watch with ostentatious ease. His time had come. If all the minutes of all the time to come should be as short as those forty had been, how soon he, Jim Munson, cow-puncher, would have ridden them all into the past. But his “get away” must be clean and dignified. “Likely bunch you have there,” he said, casually, turning away with unassumed reluctance. “Fair to middlin’,” said Brown with pride. “Shippin’ to Sioux City, you said?” “Yep.” “Well, so long.” “So long. Shippin’ any these days, Jim?” “Nope. Boss never dribbles ’em out. When he ships he ships. Ain’t none gone over the rails since last Fall.” He stepped off briskly and vaulted the fence with as lightsome an air as though he were bent on the one errand his heart would choose, and swung up the track carelessly humming a tune. But he had a vise-like grip on his cob pipe. His teeth bit through the frail stem. It split. He tossed the remains away with a gesture of nervous contempt. A whistle sounded. He quickened his pace. If he missed her,—well, the Boss was a good fellow, took a lot of nonsense from the boys, but there were things he would not stand for. Jim did not need to be told that this would be one of them. The platform was crowded. The yellow sunlight fell slantingly on the gay groups. “Aw, Munson, you’re bluffin’,” jested the mail carrier. “You ain’t lookin’ fer nobody; you know you ain’t. You ain’t got no folks. Don’t believe you never had none. Never heard of ’em.”