Royce Mack did not speak for a moment or two. He had been waiting for this outbreak ever since the mischance at the fold. It was like old Fenno not to have blurted it in the first flush of the excitement; but to wait until he had marshaled his facts and had cooled down to normal. Royce, too, had had time for preparation. Presently he made reply; schooling himself to calmness and even to an assumption of good humor. “Treve isn’t dead wood,” he said. “If he’d never done another lick of work, since we had him, he’d have paid for a lifetime’s keep by rounding up that bunch of strays, last night. You remember where he found them. And they were still traveling--still heading north. By daylight, they’d have been over the edge of the Triple Bar range. And you can figure what that outfit of cow-men would have done to ’em. We’d never have seen wool nor hoof of one of ’em again. The Triple Bar or any other of the cattle crowd wouldn’t ask better than to shoot up a flock of sheep that strayed onto their range.” Joel Fenno kept on munching his food, interspersing this with noisy swigs of coffee. He said nothing. Mack resumed: “Besides, we’ve got Zit and Rastus, for the regular herding and for night guard. That isn’t supposed to be Treve’s job. They’re both born to it. They’re little and black and squat and splayfooted and they can’t be made homelier by galloping all day and every day, over hardpan, for hundreds of miles in the broiling sun. Neither of them has got Treve’s brain or his looks. I don’t want him turned into a splayfoot drudge. He earns his keep, good and plenty, here on the home tract. We agreed to that, long ago.” “_You_ agreed to it,” mumbled Fenno, his mouth full, his eyes glum. “_I_ didn’t. I haven’t been jawin’. But I’ve been watchin’. An’ here’s where we come to a showdown. Till we got that cur, there wasn’t any loafin’ here. Since then, you go on silly walks with him, when you might be workin’. That comes out of _my_ pocket. You let him sleep in the bunk room, like he was a Christian. The Dos Hermanos is a workin’ outfit. No time for measly pets and the like. It’s got to stop.” “I don’t neglect my job, by taking Treve up into the hills or along the coulée for a tramp, Sundays,” denied Mack. “Better do that, on my rest day, than play poker in the mess shack or ride over to Santa Carlotta and get drunk on bootleg. He’s my chum. If you don’t like him--” “I don’t. I don’t like a hair of him. He--” “Then figure out what his keep costs us; and deduct it from my share of the profits, every month. That’s fair, isn’t it?” “No,” denied Joel, sullenly. “It ain’t. You’re makin’ us both lose money by the time you waste, learnin’ him tricks and suchlike, and loafin’ around with him. Besides, it sets a bad example to the hands. Yesterday, I saw Toni tryin’ to learn Rastus to shake hands. Tryin’ to make him do like Treve does. Nice stunt for a sheep-wrastler, huh? Shakin’ hands! It’s got to stop.” “If it stops, then I stop, too,” said Mack.