The stranger's facial training at the great American game was all that saved him from committing a breach of etiquette. "Huh! Reckon it does shake a man up," he admitted. "An' I never thought about th' cayuse; no, sir; not till this minute. Any ranches in this country?" "Shore; lots of 'em. You lookin' for work?" "Yes; I reckon so," answered the stranger. "Well, if you don't look out sharp you'll shore find some." "A man's got to eat more or less regular; an' cow-punchers ain't no exception," replied the stranger, his soft drawl in keeping with his slow, graceful movements. Pop, shrewd reader of men that he was, suspected that neither of those characteristics was a true index to the man's real nature. There was an indefinable something which belied the smile--the eyes, perhaps, steel blue, unwavering, inscrutable; or a latent incisiveness crouching just beyond reach; and there was a sureness and smoothness and minimum of effort in the movements which vaguely reminded Pop of a mountain lion he once had trailed and killed. He was in the presence of a dynamic personality which baffled and disturbed him; and the two plain, heavy Colt's resting in open-top holsters, well down on the stranger's thighs, where his swinging hands brushed the well-worn butts, were signs which even the most stupid frontiersman could hardly overlook. Significant, too, was the fact that the holsters were securely tied by rawhide thongs, at their lower ends, to the leather chaps, this to hold them down when the guns were drawn out. To the initiated the signs proclaimed a gunman, a two-gun man, which was worse; and a red flag would have had no more meaning.