The man’s heart seemed likely to burst, from sheer joy and relief. He wanted to dance; or else to pray. He was not sure which. Then, of a sudden, he straightened himself and drew a long breath. Out onto the porch, from the living room, his partner, Royce Mack, was sauntering. “Hello!” hailed Royce. “You’ve been to Santa Clara, Toni says. Treve must have gone on a rampage while we were both away. When I got back, this morning, he was lying at the door, all in. Cut and muddy and lame and--” “Don’t waste breath, gassin’ about the measly cur!” rasped Fenno, with all his wonted grouchiness, as he fended off Treve’s welcoming advances in much show of disgust. “Get busy an’ tell me what prices you got for them sheep, down to Omaha. A business man’s got no time to jabber dogtalk, when there’s prices to be quoted.” “Say!” retorted Royce, nettled. “If I hated anything as much as you hate that grand collie of ours, I’d just bite myself and die of hydrophobia. Isn’t there any heart in you for a dog like that?” “No!” grunted Joel. “There ain’t. Dogs is pests. An’ this dog is the peskiest of the lot.” But in the darkness, he was furtively drawing a hoarded lump of sugar from his pocket and slipping it to the playfully eager Treve. CHAPTER VII: THEFT AND UNTHEFT “That cat of yours,” commented Royce Mack,--as he paused beside the adobe shelf on his way into the kitchen of the Dos Hermanos ranch house, and addressed the slant-eyed Chang, who served him and Fenno as cook and handy man,--“that cat of yours must have more suction power than a three-horse-power gas pump. She draws up milk the way the sun draws up water. And what the skinny brute does with it all, is more than I can figure out.” As the young rancher spoke, he nodded critically toward a pinkish-grayish-white cat that crouched in morbid indolence on the edge of the high adobe shelf, alongside an empty tin dish. She was a forlorn and gloomy thing, of scrawny ludicrousness and nasty temper. Chang loved her, beyond words. The Chinaman wiggled apologetically, as always he did when either of the partners said more than he could understand. His slitted eyes strayed protectingly toward his beloved cat. She looked like the kind of a cat a Chinaman like Chang might be expected to own and cherish. Royce went on, in banter that his servitor took as solemn earnest: “Twice to-day I’ve happened to see you fill that dish with milk. There must have been a quart of it, each time. It’s barely noon and the dish has been emptied again. That makes half a gallon of new milk your rainbow-colored cat has absorbed, since breakfast. Why, man, that bag of bones couldn’t _hold_ half a gallon of milk! She must cart it off somewhere and sell it. Lucky for you that both our milch cows happen to be ‘fresh,’ just now. Or lucky for Mr. Fenno and me. Otherwise, we’d be drinking our coffee straight; and all the milk’d go to that miserable cat.”