“Never took much to it,” Robin told him. “My old man was killed in a gun play when I was about ten. My mother was dead set against burnin’ powder. She’d seen too much of it. She was a Terry. Seems like the Tylers and Terrys have thrown lots of lead down South where she come from. She kinda discouraged me packin’ a pistol. She used to say that if I ever needed one bad enough I could get it when it was wanted. When I started to ride I never thought much about a six-pistol. Never needed one. I carry a rifle in the winter for wolves, and I’ve hunted deer an’ antelope quite a lot. Why?” “Oh, I just wondered. You’re a good-natured, easy-goin’ jasper that laughs trouble away. But what’d you do if some bad _hombre_ jumped you out of pure cussedness and started to make a monkey outa you?” “I don’t know. Never had that happen.” The idea amused Robin slightly. He laughed. “I’ve been around a few bad actors. I never seen any of ’em jump a man who wasn’t armed and kinda sorta ready for trouble--not without some good reason.” “Some men’s reasons for startin’ trouble ain’t known to nobody but themselves,” Tex observed. “But they stir her up just the same.” Matthews’ last sentence recurred to Robin as being almost prophetic before the afternoon was over. The riders had swept a range where stock was thick. They had bunched over a thousand head and were cutting beef on three sides in swirls of dust. Twilight would be on them before the last steer was separated from that milling herd. They had worked at top speed for two months. Now at the end of a hard day both horses and men were tired and short-tempered. They rode fast and silently, without smiles or laughter. Robin was well mounted. Energetic and alert he held his own wherever he found himself, but a continuous darting of steers from the herd to the cut had kept him so steadily on the jump that when a lull came he let his horse stand and sat rolling himself a cigarette. Steele shot an animal out of the herd. The brute went at a swinging trot and Steele pulled up. Then the beast suddenly changed its bovine mind and charged back. Steele laid his horse alongside. The animal dodged this way and that. Headed on each attempt by an active cutting horse the steer finally joined his fellows in the cut. Robin sat still and watched. It was nothing. If it had been a little nearer he might have taken the animal off Steele’s hands and left him free to cut out another. Such an action was not compulsory. On the other side of the herd these dodging contests were occurring every minute or two. But Steele reined up beside him. “Wake up and ride, you -- -- --!” he snarled in a tone so low Robin knew Steele intended no one but himself should hear. “Think all you got to do is be an ornament?” The epithet amazed Robin. It came out of the blue. His face flamed. Before he could open his mouth Steele dashed back into the herd.