The ranch is not for sale, for a million dollars or any other price, to you, Mr. Wainright, and be careful that you do not stumble over that stool as you go out."

The man's fat face became suddenly empurpled with rage and for a moment he was inarticulate as, backing toward the doorway, he sought for words adequately to express his outraged feelings. He was not humiliated-there are certain types of men whose thick skin serves them as an invulnerable armor against humiliation.

He was just plain mad-mad all the way through to think that he had been caught at his trickery, exposed and thwarted by a chit of a girl, and, like the type he represented naturally would be, he was mad at her rather than at himself. As he reached the doorway he found his voice.

"You'll be sorry for this! You'll be-sorry for this!" he cried, shaking a fist at her. "And, mark you, I'll get this property yet. Jefferson Wainright can buy and sell you twenty times over and he always gets what he goes after."

The figure of a tall man loomed suddenly behind him. Calloused and ungentle fingers seized him roughly by the collar of his coat. A low voice spoke softly in his ear.

"Don't you know better'n to shake your fist in a lady's face, you pot-bellied buzzard?" it inquired, and the elder Wainright was jerked unceremoniously through the doorway, whirled about and projected violently from the veranda, his speed simultaneously accelerated by the toe of a high-heeled cowboy boot. "I reckon you'd better make yourself damned scarce around here," continued the low tones of the speaker.

Wainright scrambled to his feet and turned upon the owner of the voice. He shook both fists now and fairly danced up and down in his fury. "I'll get you!" he screamed. "I'll get you! Don't you know who I am-why, I could buy and sell you a hundred thousand times over-I'm Jefferson Wainright, I am. I'll get you-layin' your hands on me-you low down, thirty-five-dollar cowpuncher!"

"Vamoose!" said the man, "and do it pronto." He emphasized his injunction with a shot, the bullet kicking up a little spurt of dust between Wainright's feet.

The fat man started on a run for his buckboard which the younger Wainright had driven down to the corrals. The man on the veranda fired again, and again the dust rose about the fleeing feet of the terrified Easterner.

Diana Henders had come to the doorway where she stood leaning against the frame, smiling.

"Don't hurt him, Bull," she said.

The man cast a quick smile over his shoulder. "I ain't a-aimin' to hurt him," he said. "I'm just a-aimin' to eddicate him. Them corn-fed Easterners ain't got no eddication nohow. What they need is someone to lam 'em manners."

As he spoke he kept on firing at the fleeing Wainright and every shot kicked up a puff of dust close to the fat man's feet until he reached the corner of the bunk-house and disappeared behind it.

The shots had called out the cook and the few men who were about, with the result that a small yet highly appreciative audience witnessed Wainright's discomfiture. A part of it was Texas Pete, who rocked to and fro in unholy glee.

"By gollies! did you see him?" he yelled. "He never hit nothin' but the high spots. I'll bet he busted all the world's records between the office and the bunk-house. Why, he done it in nothin' flat, an' you could have played checkers on his coat-tails. He shore stepped high, wide an' handsome."

On the veranda of the ranch house Bull had shoved his gun back into its holster. The smile had left his face.

"I thought you were still out with the outfit, Bull," said the girl.

"We finished up last night," he told her, "and I come in ahead." He looked down at his feet in evident embarrassment. "I come in ahead for my time, Miss."

"Your time! Why, Bull, you're not goin' to quit?"

"I reckon I better," he replied. "I been aimin' to move on fer some spell."

The girl's eyes were wide, and almost noticeably moist, and there was a surprised, hurt look in them, that he caught as he chanced to glance up at her.

"You see, Miss," he hastened to explain, "things ain't been very pleasant for me here. I ain't complainin', but there are those that don't like me, an' I figgered I'd quit before I was let out. As long as your paw was alive it was different, an' I don't need to tell you that I'd be powerful proud to work for you always, if there wasn't no one else; but there is. I reckon you got a good man an' it will be pleasanter all around if I ain't here no more."

At the mere thought of his going a lump rose in Diana Henders' throat, and she realized how much she had come to depend on him just the mere fact that she had known Bull was around had given her a feeling of greater security-he had become in the nature of a habit and it was going to be hard to break the habit.

"Oh, Bull," she cried, "I can't let you go now-I can't spare both you and Dad at the same time. You're like a brother, Bull, and I need a brother mighty badly right now.