“But if you’d help him out now, like I said a while back, he’d be bound to return it out of sheer human decency,” Carver pointed out. “I could hold a bunch down here easy. If you help Joe out now he can’t go back on you then.” “Can’t be?” Nate inquired. “I don’t know.” The blank wall of a cowless future loomed just ahead. In a few more months his old brand would be but a tradition. The only alternative would be to buy out another brand in some distant part where open range was still available. But this was his chosen territory and a move did not appeal. “One time and another I’ve dealt him a hell-slew of trouble.” “He’s put in fifteen years handing it back to you,” Carver said. “That’s part of the game, the way the pair of you has played it. Joe’s not the man to stick at trifles like that.” Younger shook his head. “Then maybe he was mistaken about how you felt,” said Carver. “He gave me my instructions straight enough. ‘If you strike trouble down there just go right to the Half Diamond H and get in touch with Nate Younger,’ he says. ‘He’ll put you straight, and if he can’t fix you up then there’s no way out.’ That’s the last words he told me.” “He didn’t,” Nate returned doubtfully. “You got mixed in the names. He didn’t ever instruct you to look to me for anything but trouble.” “Those were my orders,” Carver affirmed. “Word for word, as near as I can recall, just as I recited them to you. That’s what he says, looking right at me, just what I told you he did.” “I don’t know what he’s driving at,” Younger stated. “But I’ll certainly hand him a surprise. I’ll take him up--which’ll be exactly the last thing he’d counted on.” He tugged his hat over his eyes and turned to the nearest of the riders who trailed behind him. “You boys dangle along back and take down the north fence for a few hundred yards west of the creek,” he instructed. “Pull the staples and lay the wire flat on the ground so Carver can cross in with his bunch any time.” The men gazed in blank astonishment at thus being deprived of their contemplated sport but they turned back without comment. “That Carver now,” one youth remarked. “He’s the silver-tongued little fixer. He’s somehow managed to reverse old Nate in mid-air. Once in Caldwell he talked me out of my last dollar. He did, honest.” “But he spent it on you later,” another testified. “That’s him. But now he’s gone and ruined my whole day. I’d prefer to be jamming them cows north at a run to coaxing staples out of fence posts.”