"Yes; rustlin's got to be stylish around here ag'in, after we thought we had all them gangs rounded up and sent to the pen. I guess some of their time must be up and they're comin' home." "It's pretty tough for a single-handed girl." "Yes, it is tough. Them fellers are more than likely some of the old crowd Philbrook used to fight and round up and send over the road. He killed off four or five of them, and the rest of them swore they'd salt him when they'd done their time. Well, he's gone. But they're not above fightin' a girl." "It's a tough job for a woman," said Lambert, looking thoughtfully toward the white house on the mesa. "Ain't it, though?" Lambert thought about it a while, or appeared to be thinking about it, sitting with bent head, smoking silently, looking now and then toward the ranchhouse, the lights of which could be seen. Alta came across the porch presently, Taterleg attending her like a courtier. She dismissed him at the door with an excuse of deferred duties within. He joined his thoughtful partner. "Better go up and see her in the morning," suggested Wood, the landlord. "I think I will, thank you." Wood went in to sell a cowboy a cigar; the partners started out to have a look at Glendora by moonlight. A little way they walked in silence, the light of the barber-shop falling across the road ahead of them. "See who in the morning, Duke?" Taterleg inquired. "Lady in the white house on the mesa. Her father died a few weeks ago, and left her alone with a big ranch on her hands. Rustlers are runnin' her cattle off, cuttin' her fences----" "Fences?" "Yes, forty thousand acres all fenced in, like Texas." "You don't tell me?" "Needs men, Wood says. I thought maybe----" The Duke didn't finish it; just left it swinging that way, expecting Taterleg to read the rest. "Sure," said Taterleg, taking it right along. "I wouldn't mind stayin' around here a while. Glendora's a nice little place; nicer place than I thought it was." The Duke said nothing. But as they went on toward the barber-shop he grinned. CHAPTER VII THE HOMELIEST MAN That brilliant beam falling through the barber's open door and uncurtained window came from a new lighting device, procured from a Chicago mail-order house. It was a gasoline lamp that burned with a gas mantle, swinging from the ceiling, flooding the little shop with a greenish light. It gave a ghastly hue of death to the human face, but it would light up the creases and wrinkles of the most weathered neck that came under the barber's blade. That was the main consideration, for most of the barber's work was done by night, that trade--or profession, as those who pursue it unfailingly hold it to be--being a side line in connection with his duties as station agent. He was a progressive citizen, and no grass grew under his feet, no hair under his hand.