Joel made no immediate answer. He was peering through the dim candle-light at Treve. The old man’s thin lips moved rhythmically, as though he were chewing the mysterious cud of senility. His chin quivered. Otherwise his leathery face was blank. It gave no sign of the turmoil behind it. But Treve understood. With all a collie’s strange trick of reading human emotion behind a wordless and expressionless mask, he knew his friend was acutely unhappy. The dog got to his feet and came over to Fenno, pressing his furry bulk against the rancher’s lean legs and thrusting a sympathetic muzzle into the tough palm. He whined softly, his gaze fixed on Joel’s. From long habit, in the presence of others, Fenno made as though to repulse the dog’s friendliness. Then, with a little intake of breath, he bent over the collie and caught the classic head almost roughly between his hands. “Treve!” he mumbled, thickly. “Trevy, you and me know all about that, don’t we? We’re--we’re good pals, me and you, Trevy. The best pals there ever was.” Royce Mack looked on, dumbfounded. There was caress in Fenno’s thin voice and in his rough grasp of the dog. Treve, too, was behaving as though he were well accustomed to such signs of affection from the man. “I--I thought--” began Mack, “I thought--” “No, ye didn’t!” crossly denied Fenno, the barriers down. “You never ‘thought,’ in all your born days. If you’d knowed what it meant to think, you’d ’a’ knowed a white man couldn’t go hatin’ Trevy, like I made out I hated him. Nobody could. And likewise you’d ’a’ remembered how he kept me alive that day down by Ova, when I was throwed and crippled up and couldn’t stir to help myself; an’ how he brang water to me; an’ how he flagged you and brang _you_ to me, besides. An’ now you go jawin’ about takin’ him away; an’ askin’ what do I want for my share of him. Well, I want just a even billion dollars for my share of Trevy. I ain’t sellin’. I’m buyin’. Now whatcher want for _your_ share of him? Speak up! If I got it, I’ll pay.” Royce pondered a moment. He could not fathom this phase of the old man. Then a solution came to him. “Remember the day we got him?” asked Mack. “Remember how we made dice marks on a lump of sugar, out to the foreman shack, to see which owned him? He ate the sugar, and we compromised by owning him between us. Suppose we throw dice again to see who owns him? Loser to give up all claim to him. How about it?” “Nope,” refused Joel, stubbornly. “Lemme buy him off’n you, Mack. I’ll pay--” “I’m not selling him,” as stubbornly insisted Royce, enamored of his own sporting idea. “I’m giving you your chance. Take it or leave it. You ought to be glad I don’t suggest we let him go to whichever of us he chooses.” Joel winced. Then, despondently, he clumped across the room to the shelf where lay the parcheesi game. Choosing a cylinder cup and a pair of dice, he came back to the table. On the way he paused to pat furtively the collie’s silken ears.