"D----n you!" shouted Shields, his face dark with passion. "You have said enough, any more from you and I'll break your dirty neck! Just because I felt sorry for you when you got half killed in the saloon and let you stay in the country don't think you are the boss of this section. When I saw what a pitiful, drunken wreck you were, I felt sorry for you, but not any more. You don't want decent treatment, you want to get clubbed, and you're right in line to get just what you need, too! Now, I'm not going to stand any more of your d----d foolishness--my patience is played out. And if you were half a man you wouldn't sit there like a bump on a log and swallow what I'm saying--you'd put up a fight if you died for it. You are no good, just a drunken, lawless fool of a puncher; just a bag of wind, and it's up to you to walk a chalk line or I'll give you a taste of what I carry around with me for bums of your kind. What in h--l do you think I am? No, you don't, you stay right where you are 'til I get good and ready to have you go! You've come d----d near the end of your rope and there is just one thing for you to do, and that is, get out of this country and do it quick! You stay on your own side of the Limping Water, for if I catch you riding off any nervousness off of Cross Bar-8 ground without word from your foreman, I'll shoot you down like I'd shoot a coyote! And for a dollar I'd wipe up the earth with you right now! You d----d, sneaking, cowardly cur, you tin-horn bully! Pull your stakes and get scarce and don't you open your mouth to me--come on, lively! Pull your freight!" Bucknell slowly rode away, his eyes to the ground and not daring to say what seethed in his heart. He swore to himself that he would get square some day on both, not realizing in his anger that when sober he feared them both. The sheriff stared after him and then returned to the point where he had left his horse. As he mounted he shook his head savagely and swore. Glancing again after the puncher he struck into a canter and rode toward the ranch. CHAPTER XX BILL ATTENDS THE PICNIC The picnic aroused quite a stir for so frivolous a thing. When Blake read Mrs. Shields' invitation to the outfit they acted like schoolboys dismissed for a vacation. Grins of delight were the style on the Star C, and the overflow of bubbling happiness took the form of practical joking against Humble, whose life suddenly held much anxiety. In Ford's Station there was an air of expectancy, and Bill spent all of Saturday morning from daylight until time to start in cleaning his stage and grooming the horses, whose astonishment quickly passed into prohibitive indignation. After narrowly escaping broken bones and chewed arms Bill decided that the sextet could go as it was.