"I'm going to show you something, Bill," gasped Wayne, half choked with the breath driven out of his lungs by the great bulk on top of him and by the laughter within his soul which had not been driven out. "Something I learned from a Jap about three feet high. It cost me a hundred dollars and a broken collar bone. I'll let you off easier, Bill." The light was none too good, perhaps the boys were not yet wide awake. They didn't know how the trick was done, and it wasn't at all clear to Big Bill. Wayne seemed to grow very limp beneath his hard hands and watchful eyes. Ready for trickery Big Bill, while he bore down hard on the left shoulder, and wrenched and twisted at the corded neck, expected anything. He had considerably less respect for a Jap than for a horse, looking upon the race as mimicking apes and not men at all, and he had no wish to be bested by a Jap trick. Yet Big Bill didn't understand. Somehow Wayne Shandon slipping out of Bill's grasp like an eel through its native mud, had run an arm under his left arm pit, around his neck, over his right shoulder. Wayne's left hand leaped to Big Bill's right wrist. Bill felt that his neck was breaking, that his right arm was broken. And then he knew that Wayne was upon his knees, that his own two hundred and fifty pounds of big battling body were lifted high from the floor, that he was jerked sideways and slammed down. And then the boys were laughing and Wayne stood over him, laughing too, and he knew that his two big shoulder blades had struck the floor together. "It's a damn' Jap trick," he muttered, more than half angry now, flinging himself to his feet. "White man's fightin' I c'n lick every inch of you from red hair to toe nails." But Red Reckless was laughing and shaking hands all round and Big Bill found no one to listen to the explanations he made. One after another the owner of the outfit greeted warmly the men who were working for him. Then he swung about, and went back to Big Bill. "Shake, Bill," he cried. "It was rather a mean trick to do you up to-night but I couldn't wait until morning. I'll give you another chance when you like." Big Bill grinned and his hard brown hand shut tight about Wayne's. "There'll be lots of chances," he said shortly, his voice fierce, his black eyes very gentle. "You've come to stay, ain't you, Red?" A look of vast disgust stole over Garth Conway's face. "It's Bill and Red as if they're all dogs in one kennel," he muttered. "It isn't hard to forecast what's going to happen to a range with a boss like that!"