He reminded Nash of some big puma cub warming itself at a hearth like a common tabby cat, a tame puma thrusting out its claws and turning its yellow eyes up to its owner--tame, but with infinite possibilities of danger. For the information which Nash had given seemed to remove all his distrust of the moment before and he became instantly genial, pleasant. In fact, he voiced this sentiment with a disarming frankness immediately. "Perhaps I've seemed to be carrying a chip on my shoulder, Mr. Nash. You see, I'm not long in the West, and the people I've met seem to be ready to fight first and ask questions afterward. So I've caught the habit, I suppose." "Which a habit like that ain't uncommon. The graveyards are full of fellers that had that habit and they're going to be fuller still of the same kind." Here Sally entered, carrying the meal of the cowpuncher, arranged it, and then sat on the edge of Bard's table, turning from one to the other as a bird on a spray of leaves turns from sunlight to shadow and cannot make a choice. "Bard," stated Nash, "is going out to the ranch with me to-night." "Long ride for to-night, isn't it?" "Yes, but we'll bunk on the way and finish up early in the morning." "Then you'll have a chance to teach him Western manners on the way, Steve." "Manners?" queried the Easterner, smiling up to the girl. She turned, caught him beneath the chin with one hand, tilting his face, and raised the lessoning forefinger of the other while she stared down at him with a half frown and a half smile like a schoolteacher about to discipline a recalcitrant boy. "Western manners," she said, "mean first not to doubt a man till he tries to double-cross you, and not to trust him till he saves your life; to keep your gun inside the leather till you're backed up against the wall, and then to start shootin' as soon as the muzzle is past the holster. Then the thing to remember is that the fast shootin' is fine, but sure shootin' is a lot better. D'you get me?" "That's a fine sermon," smiled Bard, "but you're too young to make a convincing preacher, Miss Fortune." "Misfortune," said the girl quickly, "don't have to be old to do a lot of teachin'." She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms. He said with a sudden earnestness: "You seem to take it for granted that I'm due for a lot of trouble." But she shook her head gloomily. "I know what you're due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin'. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn't help fallin' into trouble." "As a fortune-teller," remarked Nash, "you'd make a good undertaker, Sally." "Shut up, Steve. I've seen this bird in action and I know what I'm talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?" He said thoughtfully: "Perhaps to-morrow night--perhaps--" "It ought to be to-morrow night," she said pointedly, her eyes on Nash.