"Howdy, Mr. Blake. Got here in time for supper, I see," he remarked as he unburdened himself. "Met Mr. Knowles and the ladies down near the ranch. They told me about the shooting." He faced about to stare at Ashton's bandaged head. "They told me you came mighty near getting yours. You shore are a lucky tenderfoot." Ashton shrugged superciliously. "The worst of it is the additional hole in my hat. I see you have a new one. Is that the latest style on the range?" "Stetson, brand A-1.," replied the puncher. "How does it strike you, Mr. Blake?--and my new shirt? Having a dude puncher on our range kind of stirred up my emulosity. They don't have real cowboy attire like his at an ordinary shorthorn cow town like Stockchute--but I did the best I could." Blake made no response to this heavy badinage. He set the supper on the chuck-box, and laconically said: "Come and get it." "Might have known you've been on round-up," remarked Gowan, with an insistent sociability oddly at variance with his usual taciturn reserve. "According to Miss Chuckie, you're some rider, and according to Mr. Knowles, you can shoot. I wouldn't mind hearing from you direct about that shooting this morning." Blake recounted the affair still more briefly than he had told it to Knowles. "That shore was a mighty close shave," commented the puncher. "But you haven't said what the fellow looked like." "He wore ordinary range clothes," replied Blake. "I couldn't see him behind the rocks, and caught only a glimpse of him as he went around the ridge. His horse was much the same build and color as Rocket." The puncher stared at Ashton with his cold unblinking eyes. "You shore picked out a Jim Dandy guide, Mr. Tenderfoot. According to this, it looks mighty like he's gone and turned hawss thief. Mr. Knowles says your Rocket hawss has vamoosed. If he's moving to Utah under your ex-guide, it'll take some lively posse to head him. What d'you say, Mr. Blake?" "I think the man is apt soon to come to the end of his rope--after dropping through a trap door," said the engineer. Gowan looked at him between narrowed eyelids, and paused with upraised coffee cup to reply: "A man that has shown the nerve this one has won't let anyone get close enough to rope him." "It will be either that or a bullet, before long," predicted Blake. "The badman is getting to be rather out of date." "Maybe a bullet," admitted Gowan. "Never any rope, though, for his kind.--Guess I'll turn in. It's something of a drive over to Stockchute and back with the wagon, and I got up early. You and Ashton might go on watch until midnight, and turn me out for the rest of the night." "Very well," agreed Blake. The puncher stretched out on his blankets under a tree, a few yards from the tent. Ashton took the dishes down to sand-scour them at the pool, while Blake saw that everything damageable was disposed safe from the knife-like fangs of the coyotes.