"Nothin’. Just got them hunters, one of ’em alive. I reckoned mebby you ’d sorta like to know it." He paused, cogitating. "Reckon we better turn him loose when we gets back to th’ hut," he suggested. "I’ll keep his guns," he added, grinning. The foreman stuck his head out in sight. "Well, I’m d—d!" he exclaimed, and sank weakly back against the bowlder. "Can you give me a hand?" he muttered. The words did not carry to the youth on the skyline, but he saw, understood, and, slipping and bumping down the steep wall with more speed than sense, dashed across the draw and up the other side. He nodded sagely as he examined the wound and bound it carefully with the sleeve of his own shirt. "’T ain’t much—loss of blood, mostly. Yo ’re better off than Travis." "Travis dead?" whispered Buck. "In th’ back! Pore feller, pore feller; didn’t have no show. Tell me about it." At the end of the story he nodded. "Yo ’re all right, Cassidy; yo ’re a white man. He ’d ’a’ stood a good chance of gettin’ me, ’cept for you." A frown clouded his face and he looked weakly about him as if for an answer to the question that bothered him. "Now what am I goin’ to do up here with all these cows?" he muttered. Bill rolled the wounded man a cigarette and lit it for him, after which he fell to tossing pebbles at a rock further down the hill. "I reckon it _will_ be sorta tough," he replied, slowly. "But I sorta reckoned me an’ you, an’ that other feller, can make a big ranch out of yore little one. Anyhow, I ’ll bet we can have a mighty big time tryin’. A mighty fine time. What you think?" Buck smiled weakly and shoved out his hand with a visible effort. "We can! Shake, Bill!" he said, contentedly. II THE WEASEL The winter that followed the coming of Bill Cassidy to the Bar-20 ranch was none too mild to suit the little outfit in the cabin on Snake Creek, but it was not severe enough to cause complaint and they weathered it without trouble to speak of. Down on the big ranges lying closer to the Gulf the winter was so mild as to seem but a brief interruption of summer. It was on this warm, southern range that Skinny Thompson, one bright day of early spring, loped along the trail to Scoria, where he hoped to find his friend, Lanky Smith, and where he determined to put an end to certain rumors that had filtered down to him on the range and filled his days with anger.