"How is your heart to-day, friend? Is it strong?" "Weak," replied Yellow Bird jestingly, touching his breast with a fluttering hand. "It would be stronger if you had red meat in your stomach," Smith suggested significantly. "The bacon is not for Indians," agreed Yellow Bird. "But the woman would have no cattle left if she killed only her own beef." "Many people stop here--strangers and friends," Yellow Bird admitted. "There is plenty on the range." Smith looked toward the Bar C ranch. "He is a dog on the trail, that white man, when his cattle are stolen," Yellow Bird replied doubtfully. "I've killed dogs--me, Smith--when they got in my way. Yellow Bird, are you a woman, that you are afraid?" "Wolf Robe, who stole only a calf, sits like this"--Yellow Bird looked at Smith sullenly through his spread fingers. "You have talked with the forked tongue, Yellow Bird. You are not a Piegan buck of the great Blackfoot nation; you are a woman. Your fathers killed men; _you_ are afraid to kill cattle." Smith turned from him contemptuously. "My heart is as strong as yours. I am ready." It was dusk when Smith returned and held out a blood-stained flour sack to the squaw. "Liver. A two-year ole." The squaw's eyes sparkled. Ah, this was as it should be! Her man provided for her; he brought her meat to eat. He was clever and brave, for it was other men's meat he brought her to eat. MacDonald had killed only his own cattle, and secretly it had shamed her, for she mistook his honesty for lack of courage. To steal was legitimate; it was brave; something to be told among friends at night, and laughed over. Susie, she had observed with regret, was honest, like her father. She patted the back of Smith's hand, and looked at him with dog-like, adoring eyes as they stood in the log meat-house, where fresh quarters hung. "I'd do more nor this for you, Prairie Flower;" and, laying his hand upon her shoulder, he pressed it with his finger-tips. "Say, but that's great liver!" Tubbs reached half the length of the table and helped himself a third time. "That'd make a man fight his grandmother. Who butchered it?" "Me," Smith answered. "It tastes like slow elk," said Susie. "Maybe you oughtn't to eat it till you're showed the hide," Smith suggested. "Maybe I oughtn't," Susie retorted. "I didn't see any fresh hide a-hangin' on the fence. We _always_ hangs _our_ hides." "I _never_ hangs _my_ hides. I cuts 'em up in strips and braids 'em into throw-ropes. It's safer." The grub-liners laughed at the inference which Smith so coolly implied. The finding of White Antelope's body, and its subsequent burial, had delayed the opening of Dora's night-school, so Smith, for reasons of his own, had spent much of his time in the bunk-house, covertly studying the grub-liners, who passed the hours exchanging harrowing experiences of their varied careers.