"What's brought you in?" he demanded, with a dangerous calm. Then the calm broke before his storm of feeling. "Don't tell me ther's trouble around your layout, too," he cried, without waiting for reply. Then he turned on Nan, who was still on the veranda. "Say, Nan, they done it. The rotten swines have done it. They shot 'Jock' up!" "The Highland bull?" Nan gasped. "Yes. That's it." Bud laughed furiously. "That bull I imported last fall for three thousand dollars," he went on, turning back to the foreman. "They shot him up and drove off his twenty-five cows from the Coyote Bluff pastures. Dirty spite an' meanness. The white-livered scum!" Then with a fierce oath the usually even-tempered Bud hurled his wrath upon the waiting man. "Gorl darn it, you're standin' around like a barbed wire fence post. What in hell's brought you around now? What they done your way?" His manner roused the foreman to a soreness he wasn't slow in showing. "Jest thirty Shorthorn yearlings," he said without any attempt to soften the blow. "Jest thirty--prize stock." The announcement had an unlooked-for effect. Where Nan expected another furious display Bud remained silent. His eyes were wide as they stared into the foreman's. But no word came. Then, after a few moments, he began to laugh and Nan understood. She felt it was either that, or--her father would break something. "Well, I go plumb to hell!" he cried at last. And Nan felt relieved at the sound of his voice. The next moment Lal Hobhouse was pouring out his story with a redundant selection from his choicest vocabulary of abusive epithet, which was impartially divided between the rustlers and the cowhands under his charge. Nan waited patiently, her eyes studying her father's face. But whatever his feelings he permitted them no further display, and, at the conclusion of the story, instead of offering comment, or reverting to his own discoveries, he turned to his daughter with a smile. "Food on, Nan?" he inquired, in his easy way. "Guess I'm needin' food--pretty bad. Maybe we'll feel better after." Then he turned to the men who stood around. "Git on down to the bunkhouse an' feed, boys. One o' you grab my plug. After, we'll get around out with Lal here. I----" He broke off as Nan darted away down the veranda. The mail man had just clattered up to the front of the house, and she had gone to meet him. Bud passed his horse on to one of the men, and, with heavy strides, clanking with the rattle of his heavy Mexican spurs, his leather chapps creaking as he moved, he mounted the veranda and made his way into the house. * * * * * * Nan entered the parlor with her hands full of mail. The meal was laid ready, and a colored girl was setting the chairs in their places. "I'll jest get a clean up, Nan," her father said, without a single trace of his recent display. "Guess I'm full of dust."