He looked long into the starlit sky, and Abbie, emboldened after a time by his seeming composure, rose and bade him good night. He reached out for the cigarette materials laid convenient to his hand. "Guess I'll make a terbacco smoke." Abbie struck a match and he luxuriously filled his capacious lungs. Then slowly exhaling the pungent wreath he flicked the ash from the cigarette tip and tentatively extended his sinewy arm. It was as devoid of tremor as that of a bronze statue and he nodded his satisfaction. "Her heart won't be broke none." His voice was very calm and even. CHAPTER VI THE MAN AND THE WOMAN At the junction of Horse and Squaw creeks, some seven miles from where Grace Carter was lying in her hammock awaiting the arrival of her brother and mother, Ken Douglass outspanned his weary scraper team and called his day's work done. The damage had been of even greater magnitude than he had feared and his most sanguine estimate placed the time required for complete repairs at three more days. He had impressed every available man and team into the service, leaving only one young fellow at the ranch to do the choring inseparable to a holding like the C Bar. Having outlined his plans and assigned to each man his specific duty, he had personally plunged into the thick of the work, driving his men only a trifle less strenuously than he did himself. In consequence whereof it was a sore-muscled crowd that ruefully rubbed their aching backs about the camp-fire that night, quaintly profane after the manner of their kind. "Gawd! But you make a bum driver, Punk," said one of them dispassionately to a short, squat fellow who was anointing his blistered hands with bacon drippings. "Yuh pushed so hawd on thu lines that yuh raised cawns on that claybank's gooms. Was yuh thinkin' yuh was polin dogies oveh to Glenwood again?" Now Punk Dixon was a bit sensitive on the dogie question; while employed in the engaging pursuit of prodding refractory yearlings up a loading chute that spring his flimsy footing had given way, precipitating him under the feet of two score frightened animals whose sharp hoofs had reduced his brand new "chaps" to rags and himself to a sadly dilapidated mass of incoherent blasphemy. But he grinned good-naturedly and wiped the surplus grease off his hands over the head of his tormenter.