BURNT BRANDS 219 XXX. ROGUES DISAGREE 226 XXXI. A PAIR OF DEUCES 237 XXXII. THE HOLD-UP 245 XXXIII. THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW STREAK 251 XXXIV. RAMONA GOES DUCK-HUNTING 258 XXXV. THE DESERT 266 XXXVI. HOMER DINSMORE ESCORTS RAMONA 272 XXXVII. ON A HOT TRAIL 279 XXXVIII. DINSMORE TO THE RESCUE 287 XXXIX. A CRY OUT OF THE NIGHT 292 XL. GURLEY'S GET-AWAY 296 XLI. HOMING HEARTS 302 XLII. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION 310 XLIII. TEX RESIGNS 319 XLIV. DINSMORE GIVES INFORMATION 328 XLV. RAMONA DESERTS HER FATHER 332 XLVI. LOOSE THREADS 338 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- OH, YOU TEX! CHAPTER I THE LINE-RIDER Day was breaking in the Panhandle. The line-rider finished his breakfast of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartily, for it would be long after sunset before he touched food again. Cheerfully and tunelessly he warbled a cowboy ditty as he packed his supplies and prepared to go. "Oh, it's bacon and beans most every day, I'd as lief be eatin' prairie hay." While he washed his dishes in the fine sand and rinsed them in the current of the creek he announced jocundly to a young world glad with spring: "I'll sell my outfit soon as I can, Won't punch cattle for no damn' man." The tin cup beat time against the tin plate to accompany a kind of shuffling dance. Jack Roberts was fifty miles from nowhere, alone on the desert, but the warm blood of youth set his feet to moving. Why should he not dance? He was one and twenty, stood five feet eleven in his socks, and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds of bone, sinew, and well-packed muscle. A son of blue skies and wide, wind-swept spaces, he had never been ill in his life. Wherefore the sun-kissed world looked good to him. He mounted a horse picketed near the camp and rode out to a _remuda_ of seven cow-ponies grazing in a draw. Of these he roped one and brought it back to camp, where he saddled it with deft swiftness.