Hopalong nodded and smiled again. "That’s right, Kid," he answered, thoughtfully. "I come down to make him get out of th’ country. You let him go after we get out of this. I reckon I got yore share of the reward right here in my pocket; purty near that much, anyhow. You take it an’ let him vamoose. What you say?" Sammy rose, angry and disgusted. His anger spoke first. "You go to h—l with yore money! I don’t want it!" Then, slowly and wonderingly spoke his disgust. "He ’s yourn; do what you want. But I here remarks, frank an’ candid, open an’ so all may hear, that yo ’re a large, puzzlin’ d—d fool. Now lay back on that blanket an’ go to sleep afore I changes my mind!" Sammy drifted past the prisoner and looked down at him. "Hear that?" he demanded. There was no answer and he grunted. "Huh! You heard it, all right; an’ it plumb stunned you." Passing on he grabbed the last blanket in sight, it was on the foreman’s horse, and rolled up in it, feet to the fire. His gun he placed under the saddle he had leaned against, which now made his pillow. As he squirmed into the most comfortable position he could find under the circumstances he raised his head and glanced across at his friend. "Huh!" he growled softly. "That’s th’ worst of them sentimental fellers. That gal shore wrapped him ’round her li’l finger all right. Oh, well," he sighed. "’Tain’t none of my doin’s, thank the Lord; I got sense!" And with the satisfaction of this thought still warm upon him he closed his eyes and went to sleep, confident that the slightest sound would awaken him; and fully justified in his confidence. XIII HIS CODE Mr. "Youbet" Somes, erstwhile foreman of the Two-X-Two ranch, in Arizona, and now out of a job, rode gloomily toward Kit, a town between him and his destination. Needless to say, he was a cowman through and through. More than that, he was so saturated with cowmen’s traditions as to resent pugnaciously anything which flouted them. He was of the old school, and would not submit quietly to two things, among others, which an old-school cowman hated—wire fences and sheep. To this he owed his present ride, for he hated wire fences cordially. They meant the passing of the free, open range, of straight trails across country; they meant a great change, an intolerable condition. "Yessir, bronch! Things are gettin’ damnabler every year, with th’ railroads, tourists, nesters, barb’ wire, an’ sheep. Last year, it was a windmill, that screeched till our hair riz up. It would n’t work when we wanted it to, an’ we could n’t stop it when it once got started. "It gave us no sleep, no peace; an’ it killed Bob Cousins—swung round with th’ wind an’ knocked him off ’n th’ platform, sixty feet, to th’ ground. Bob allus did like to monkey with th’ buzz saw. I shore told him not to go up there, because th’ cussed thing was loaded; but, bein’ mule-headed, he knowed more ’n me.