The old horse wrangler's reply was only a grunt. Allen refused to be discouraged by this and continued to prattle like a schoolboy on vacation. Bill McAllister listened to him for a time in a disgruntled silence, but little by little his reserve fell away, and before he knew it, he was chuckling at the boy's remarks and answering his apparently pointless question without reserve. "I betcha when ol' man Reed first come here he had to be right smart in watchin' for Comanches," Allen said. "Yuh betcha! More than once I high-tailed into the corral one jump ahead of a dozen of them devils," the old wrangler said reminiscently. That settled one thing in Allen's mind. Bill McAllister had worked for John Reed long before Spur Treadwell appeared on the scene. Spur Treadwell either did not find it necessary to fire him, or was afraid to do so for fear of comment. "I betcha yuh have fights aplenty with rustlers," Allen said and then added eagerly: "I'm goin' to get me a gun so I can help fight them." "Son, don't yuh do no such thing. Yuh're a whole lot safer naked than if yuh packed a gun," the old-timer warned. "But suppose I met a rustler?" the boy insisted. "I ain't talkin' about rustlers, but some of the gents what has come to work on this outfit since the or man died," Bill McAllister said gruffly. Allen allowed the subject to drop. He had learned enough for the present. The horse herd was pastured to the south of the ranch in a large meadow which was partly fenced in by dense thickets and partly by wire. Here he met "Maverick Ed" Stone, the other day herder. Maverick was a lantern-jawed, stoop-shouldered, lanky man of forty, and Allen found him almost as taciturn as his boss. The herder's job was an easy one. It consisted in riding along the boundaries of the meadow and watching to see that none of the horses escaped through the brush. That night at chow, Allen glanced along the long table in the cookhouse at the score of punchers present. The riders were of all ages. The seven men who sat at the far end of the table were as different from the others as sheep from goats. They were quiet-spoken men and all wore their holsters tied down. The others were cow-punchers pure and simple, who, while they would all fight at the drop of a hat, were not professional fighters. To Allen these gunmen were one more point against Spur Treadwell. He knew they could be explained satisfactorily to others by the fact that the ranch was close to the Nations and that several raids had been made on the Double R stock. Every ranch in such a situation would keep a gang of fighters on its payrolls. By keeping his ears open and asking a few judicious questions that night in the bunk house, Allen learned that the gunmen worked the northern end of the ranges, as this was considered the danger point. It was near the Hard Pan country which led to the Nations. "That's plumb natural, but if a gent was lootin' the ranch, it would make it plumb easy," he told himself.