"You--you _tenderfoot_!" she flung at him. "Are you locoed? Hadn't you any more sense than to do that? Why, if Daddy hadn't told Mr. Gowan to wait--" "You shore would have got yours, you--rustler!" snapped the puncher. "It was you, though, Miss Chuckie--your being here." "But he's not a rustler, Kid," protested the girl. "Where are your eyes? Look at his riding togs. If they're not tenderfoot, howling tenderfoot--!" "Just the same, honey, he's shot a yearling," said Knowles, frowning at the culprit. "Suppose you let me do the questioning." "Ah--pardon me," remarked the hunter, rebounding from apprehension to easy assurance at sight of the girl's smile. "I would prefer to be third-degreed by the young lady. Permit me to salute the Queen of the Outlaws!" He bent over the fingers of one hand to raise his silver-banded sombrero by its high peak. It left his head--and a bullet left the muzzle of the puncher's revolver. A hole appeared low down in the side of the sombrero. "That'll do, Kid," ordered the cowman. "No more hazing, even if he is a tenderfoot." "Tenderfoot?" replied Gowan, his mouth like a straight gash across his lean jaws. "How about his drawing on me--and how about your yearling? That bullet went just where it ought to 've gone with his hat down on his head." There was no jesting even of the grimmest quality in the puncher's look and tone. He was very cool and quiet--and his Colt's was leveled for another shot. The hunter thrust up his hands as high as he could reach. "You--you surely can't intend to murder me!" he stammered, staring from the puncher to the cowman. "I'll pay ransom--anything you ask! Don't let him shoot me! I'm Lafayette Ashton--I'll pay thousands--anything! My father is George Ashton, the great financier!" "New York?" queried Knowles. "No, no, Chicago! He--If only you'll write to him!" The girl burst into a ringing laugh. "Oh!" she cried, the moment she could speak, "Oh, Daddy! don't you see? He really thinks we're a bunch of wild and woolly bandits!" The hunter looked uncertainly from her dimpled face to Gowan's ready revolver. Turning sharply about to the cowman, he caught him in a reluctant grin. With a sudden spring, he placed the girl between himself and the scowling puncher. Behind this barrier of safety he swept off his hat and bowed to the girl with an exaggerated display of politeness that hinted at mockery. "So it's merely a cowboy joke," he said. "I bend, not to the Queen of the Outlaws, but to the Princess of the Cows!" Her dimples vanished. She looked over his head with the barest shade of disdain in her expression. "The joke came near to being on us," she said. "Kid, put up your gun. A tenderfoot who has enough nerve and no more sense than to draw when you have the drop on him, you've hazed him enough." Gowan sullenly reloaded his Colt's and replaced it in its holster.