"Oh, I can get all the snake-shooting I want, any time." Billy Louise laughed good-humoredly. "I wish you'd give Blue a few lessons--the old sinner!" "Not on your life, I won't." Ward leaned from the saddle, picked up the snake by the tail, pinched off the rattles, and dropped the repulsive thing to the ground with a slight shiver of relief. He gave the rattles to Billy Louise. "I'm glad Blue does feel a wholesome respect for rattlers; he'll take better care of himself--and his mistress. With me it doesn't matter." "Oh--doesn't it?" asked Billy Louise, and there was that in her tone that made Ward's heart give a flop. "There's some of Marthy's cattle right ahead," she added hurriedly, seizing the first trifle with which to neutralize the effect of that tone. "MK monogram," said Ward absently, reading the brand mechanically, as is the habit of your true range man. "Pretty fresh, too. Must have just bought them." "He got them a month or so ago," said Billy Louise. "Marthy says--" "A month?" Ward turned and gave the cow nearest him a keener look. "Pretty good condition," he observed, quite idly. "Say, William, when these hills get filled up with Y6es and big Ds, all these other scrub critters will have to hunt new range, won't they?" "It will be a long while before the big Ds crowd out so much as a crippled calf," Billy Louise answered pessimistically. "I lost two nice heifers, a week or so ago. They broke through the upper fence into the alfalfa and started to fill up, of course. They were dead when I found them." "Next time I cash in my wolf--" Ward started to promise, but she cut him short. "Do you mind if we stop at the Cove, Ward? Mommie wanted me to stop and get some currants. Marthy says they're ripe, and she has more than she knows what to do with." "I don't mind--if you're dead sure it's the currants." "You certainly are in a pestering mood to-day," Billy Louise protested, laughing. "You can't jump any game on that trail, smarty. Charlie Fox is a perfectly lovely young man, but he's got a girl in Wyoming. The stage-driver says there's never been a trip in that he didn't take a letter from the Cove box to Miss Gertrude M. Shannon, Elk Valley, Wyoming. So you needn't try--" "Nice, mouthy stage-driver," Ward commented. "Foxy ought to land on him a few times and see if he'd take the hint."