He began practice with the new six-shooter when it came. Riding here and there he would flip it from its scabbard and let fly at a bit of sage, a prairie-dog, a tin can by a water hole, anything that loomed as a mark. He accustomed himself to the wicked crack of the explosion, the jump of the weapon in his hand. He would draw and draw, as a pugilist in training shadow boxes, for speed and certainty, until certain movements became almost automatic, until he did not have to look or grope or fumble. It became a game of skill, like the golf swing, or the timing of a return in tennis. He found himself acquiring a control beyond what he expected when he began. In a month, during which he burned up forty dollars’ worth of ammunition, Robin found himself taking a genuine pleasure in mastery of the weapon. Simply to snap the gun at something on the ground, to see the can or whatever it was, jump in a blob of dust, gave him a peculiar satisfaction, very like the concealed pride a roper gets from putting his loop over a cow’s horns at the limit of his throw. If Shining Mark had never crossed his trail, he reflected, he would never have thought of getting fun out of pistol-practice with a Colt .45. It was fun, a form of play he had never indulged in before. He wondered sometimes if his father, who had been reputed handy with a gun, had liked to play thus. And if his play had led in the end to using a gun in deadly earnest, to his mother’s sorrow? Robin’s mother had hated guns. She blamed Colonel Colt, not the passions of men, for her untimely widowhood. Robin felt a little glad she was not alive to grieve over her son who was following in his father’s footsteps--perhaps to the same end. A woman, he reflected, couldn’t _sabe_. Ivy didn’t understand. Neither did May Sutherland. He doubted if even May knew that while a man might love life dearly, under certain conditions it wasn’t worth living--not if a man had to crawl before another to hold life in security. So he kept his daily practice to himself, and the real purpose of his practice. Meantime, old Dan Mayne made a trip to Helena. When he came back he seemed a little surprised. “They tell me there’s been a stock detective layin’ low on this range for six months past,” he said. “Just on general principles, they say. He ain’t reported nothin’ yet, so they don’t take me serious seein’ I couldn’t name no names. I didn’t dare do that. Jim Bond’s the registered owner of the T Bar S all right. He claims it. Looks like the only way I can keep Mark from stealin’ me blind is to beat him to everythin’ that belongs to me.”