"When I rides one like that I wants elbow room."

They ran the pony, bucking, out of the corral. Bull stepped to the animal's side.

"What you doin'?" demanded Colby, who had been standing too far away to overhear the conversation.

"Toppin' this one for the dude," replied Bull.

"No you're not," snapped Colby. His voice was angry. "You'll ride the hosses I tells you to and so will he."

"I'm ridin' this one," replied Bull. He had grasped the cheek strap with his left hand, his right was on the horn of the saddle. Carefully he placed his left foot in the stirrup. Then he nodded to a man standing at the horse's head.

The blind was snatched away and the man leaped aide. The horse reared, wheeled and struck at Bull, but Bull was not there-he was in the saddle. The animal lunged forward awkwardly once, then he gathered himself, stuck his nose between his front feet and went to pitching, scientifically and in earnest, and as he pitched he lunged first to the right and then to the left, twisting his body, squealing and kicking. Bull waved his sombrero and slapped the beast on neck and rump with it and the pinto bucked the harder.

Finding that these tactics failed to unseat the rider he commenced suddenly to turn end for end in air at each jump, yet still the man stuck, until the beast, frantic with combined terror and rage, stopped in his tracks and turned savagely to bite at Bull's legs. Just a moment of this until he felt the sting of the quirt and then he reared quickly and threw himself over backward in an effort to crush his rider, nor did he miss him by a matter of more than inches.

There are those who will tell you just how you should throw yourself safely to one side when a horse falls, but any man who has had a horse fall with him, or deliberately throw himself backward, knows that it is five parts chance and the rest luck if he isn't caught, and so it was just luck that Bull fell clear.

Diana Henders felt a sudden lump in her throat and then she saw the horse scramble to his feet and the rider too, just in time to throw a leg across the saddle, and come up with a firm seat and both feet in the stirrups. The quirt fell sharply first on one flank and then on the other, the pinto took a dozen running jumps and then settled down to a smooth run across the open.

Five minutes later he came loping back, blowing and sweaty, still trembling and frightened, but with the hump out of his back.

"You kin ride him now," said Bull to young Wainright, as he dismounted carefully and stood stroking the animal's neck.

Hal Colby came forward angrily, but Bull had dismounted close to where Diana Henders stood, and it was she who spoke to him first, and Colby, approaching, heard her words.

"Thank you, ever so much, Bull," she said. "I was sorry afterwards that I asked you to ride him, for I thought you were going to be hurt when he threw himself-I should never have forgiven myself."

"Shucks!" said Bull. "It wasn't nothin'."

Colby walked off in another direction. If there had been bad blood between the two men in the past it had never been given outward expression, but from that moment Colby made little or no effort to hide the fact that he had no use for Bull, while the latter in many little ways showed his contempt for the foreman.

Better friendships than had ever existed between these two have been shattered because of a woman, but there were other exciting causes here. That Colby had gotten Bull's job might have been enough to cause a break, while the foreman's evident suspicion that Bull knew a great deal too much about the holdups in Hell's Bend and the shooting of Mack Harber would have turned even more generous natures than Hal Colby's against the ex-foreman.

In spite of herself Diana Henders could not deny a feeling of chagrin that Jefferson Wainright had permitted another man to top a bad horse for him, although it had been she who had arranged it. Perhaps she was a trifle cool to the young Easterner that evening, but she thawed gradually beneath the geniality of his affable ways and entertaining conversation, and in the weeks that followed, during which she accompanied the outfit throughout the round-up, she was with him much of the time, to the great discomfiture of Hal Colby and others.

The Bar Y foreman had, however, after the day that Bull rode the pinto for Wainright, left the latter severely alone, for the following morning Elias Renders had come to the corral and selected a new string of horses for the "dude" and spoken a few words into the ear of his foreman.

The long, hard days in the saddle left them all ready to turn in to their blankets soon after supper. A smoke, a little gossip and rough banter and the men jingled away through the darkness in search of their bed-rolls to the accompaniment of their tinkling spurs.

"I seen Injun signs today," remarked a tall, thin Texan one evening. "'Bout a dozen of 'em been campin' over yender a piece in them hills. Signs warn't over four hour old."

"They mought be peaceable Injuns on pass from the reservation," suggested another.

"More likely they're renegades," said Shorty. "Anyhow I ain't a-takin' no chances on no Injuns--I shoots fust an' axes for their pass later."

"You ain't never seed a hos-tyle Injun, Shorty," said Texas Pete.

"A lot you know about it, you sawed-off, hammered-down, squint-eyed horse thief," retorted Shorty courteously; "I'm a bad man with Injuns."

"By gollies!" exclaimed Pete, "thet reminds me of another verse:

"'So bring on yore bad men, yore killers an' sich

An' send out some Greasers to dig me a ditch,

Fer when I gits through, ef I takes any pains,

You'll need a big hole fer to plant the remains.'"

On the opposite side of the chuck wagon, where a tent had been pitched for Diana Henders, a little group surrounded her fire. Beside the girl there were her father, Hal Colby and Jefferson Wainright, Jr. The two young men always gravitated in Diana's direction when off duty. Colby had been quick to realize the advantage that the other's education gave him and bright enough to remain a silent observer of his manners and conversation. Inwardly he held the Easterner in vast contempt, yet he cultivated him and often rode with him that he might learn from him something of those refinements which he guessed constituted the basis of Diana's evident liking for Wainright. He asked him many questions, got him to talk about books, and made mental note of various titles with the determination to procure and read the books that he had heard the man discuss with Diana.

Bull, on his part, kept away from the Henders' fire in the evening and in the day time Colby saw to it that his assignments sent him far afield from where there was much likelihood of Diana being, with the result that he saw less of her than was usual at home.

The ex-foreman's natural reserve had degenerated almost to sullenness. He spoke seldom and never smiled, but he rode hard and did his work well, until he came to be acknowledged as the best all-round man in the outfit. There was no horse that he wouldn't ride, no risk that he wouldn't take, no work that he would ever refuse, no matter how unfair the assignment, with the result that the men respected him though there were none who seemed to like his company, with the exception of Texas Pete.

"Well, boys," said Elias Henders, rising, "I guess we'd better be turning in. Tomorrow's going to be a hard day."

The two younger men rose, Colby stretching and yawning. "I reckon you're right, Mr.