The albino half-closed his eyes, the pale eyeballs glittering through the slit of his lids as he reflected on this proposition, tapping a careless finger on his knee. He glanced absent-mindedly toward the bar, his thoughts wholly occupied with the matter in hand. A pair of eyes that gazed back at him drew his own and he found himself looking at Bentley, the man who repped with the Three Bar for Slade. The albino's suspicions were as fluid and easily roused as those of a beast of prey in a dangerous neighborhood. With one of those quick shifts of which his mind was capable he concentrated every mental effort toward linking Bentley with some unpleasant episode of the past. The man had turned away and Harper could only sense a vague feeling that he was dangerous to him, without definite point upon which to base his suspicions. At the sound of Harris's voice his mind made another lightning shift back to the present. "Well?" Harris asked. "Why, if I had anything to do with it, like you seem to think, I'd advise against our bucking each other," Harper said. "I'd try to get along--and declare hands off." He rose, nodded to the two men and returned to the stud game. "He'll do it too," Evans predicted. "There's that much fixed anyway--not a bad piece of work." The two men returned to the bar and Brill moved close to Harris. For fifteen years he had stood behind that bar and observed the men of the whole countryside at their worst--and best; and he knew men. As well as if he had heard the words of the three at the table he knew that Harris and Harper had reached an agreement of some sort that was satisfactory to both. "Take the boys over a drink on me," Harris said, and Brill slid a bottle and five whisky glasses on to a tray and moved over to the table. "Here's a drink on the Three Bar boss," he announced. Lang scowled, remembering the recent occasion when Harris had ordered them off. "To hell with----" he commenced, but the albino cut him short. "Drink it," he said. Ten minutes later the five men rose to go. Harris looked at his watch. "I'm off," he said to Evans. "Try and get the boys home by to-morrow morning if it's possible." He went outside and mounted as the five rustlers swung to their saddles. "I'm going your way as far as the forks," he said to Harper. The Three Bar men were treated to the sight of their foreman riding down the road beside Harper at the head of four of the worst ruffians in the State.