Tuck, the job’s yours if you’ll do me a little favor.”

Tuck Merry held out his huge hand and said: “Mate, there ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Listen,” whispered Cal, intensely. “First, you’re not to tell a soul that you were in the marines an’ how you got that name Tuck an’ was one of Dempsey’s boxin’ pardners.”

“I get you, Cal. I’m dumb on the has-been stuff. I lose my memory.”

Cal was now tingling with thrilling glee at the enormous possibilities of his idea.

“Tuck, I’m the baby of the Thurman family,” he went on. “I’ve two brothers an’ seven cousins, all of which think I’m spoiled. Father gave me more time for schoolin’ an’ I’ve had a little better advantages, maybe. An’ these fellows all pick on me to beat hell. Now don’t let me give you the idea there’s any hard feelin’. Not at all. I sure think heaps of all the boys, an’ as for Enoch an’ Boyd, my brothers, I sure love them. But they all make life awful tough for me. Girls are scarce, an’ when we have dances—which is often—there are not enough to go round. If I poke my nose into the schoolhouse, where we have our dances, I sure get it punched. For that matter, fightin’ is next to dancin’ in the Tonto. They sort of go together. Lately all my cousins seem to want to beat me up. They say I’m gettin’ big enough an’ that it ought to be done right before I take the bit in my teeth. Wess Thurman licked me bad not long ago. They’ve all had their fun with me, an’, darn it—I’ve never licked a single one of them. They’re older an’ bigger. . . . Now what I want you to do is to lick all of them.”

“Ain’t you givin’ me a large order, matey?” queried Merry, smiling for the first time.

“Not yet. Aw, Tuck, that’ll be easy. Don’t worry. They’ll all pick the fights. You needn’t do anythin’ but wait, an’ when one of them starts somethin’ you just tuck him away. It will tickle my father ’most as much as me.”

“I’ll do my best,” promised Merry. “What else? What’s the large order, if this one ain’t much?”

“Now I’m comin’ to hard feelin’s,” responded Cal, with more grimness than humor.