All throughout the range there is a general reduction of working forces at this period, the superfluous men seeking the larger towns for the commendable purpose of putting into active circulation their season's hoardings; that they are almost always obsessed with a weird delusion that somewhere in the gilded halls of Chance the fickle dame Fortune awaits their coming with a whole cornucopia of royal favors, aces by preference, only insures the economy of time to that end. For whether she smile or not, there be always dames and favors of price to reward the ambitious; and to be lucky in love is even more expensive than to be unlucky at cards. The process may be conditionally prolonged, but the final result is always the same. By the time the grass greens again they have been divested of everything, even of their cares, and are ready to take up the broken threads of the endless chain that links them indissolubly to the old traditions. The C Bar outfit had narrowed down to four men besides Douglass. Red, Woolly, Punk and a saturnine-faced Texan whose addiction to unique expletives of an unconventional nature had secured for him the sobriquet of "Holy Joe." The two latter were detailed to "riding fences" while Red and Woolly did desultory choring and hauled wood. Robert Carter had returned for the rodeo and he and Douglass had enjoyed several hunting trips in company afterward; that is to say, the former did, Douglass evincing a certain restlessness which he, however, successfully strove to conceal from the younger man. He was all impatience for the departure of Carter and his sister, for reasons that he did not care to share with either, and he felt a positive relief when the day of their leaving was definitely announced. Carter had been vainly endeavoring to persuade him to accompany them, and one night enlisted his sister s influence to that end; her gentle insistence precipitated Douglass's proffer of repayment of the losses incurred through Matlock's emity. "I haven't either the time or means at my disposal for such a junket," he said with decision. "I alone am responsible for all the losses occurring on this ranch of late, and there's just about enough due me on salary account to square it up. I've got it all figured out here," producing a memorandum sheet, "and I think my estimate of the damage is a fair one; I'd like your approval of it. It leaves a trifle over a hundred left coming to me and I've got other and more urgent uses for it. Besides, I've got work to do that can't be postponed." Carter heard him in open-mouthed amazement, his astonishment changing first to amusement, then to indignation as he gathered the drift of Douglass's intent. Grace, suddenly comprehending many things previously only hinted at, looked genuinely distressed and tapped nervously on the carpet with her sandaled foot. "Why, man, you're crazy!" shouted Carter. "Do you think for a moment that I will permit you to even contemplate such an absurdity?"