There's lots of bad 'uns in these parts and when a feller never talks none, like him, it's probably because he's got something on his mind he don't want to talk about."

"I thought he was your friend," said the girl.

Colby flushed. "He is my friend. I set a lot of store by Bull; but it's you I'm thinkin' of-not him or me. I wouldn't want nothin' to happen that you'd have to be sorry about.' .'

"I don't understand you, Hal."

He flecked the leg of his chaps with the lash of his quirt. "Oh, pshaw, Di," he parried, "I don't want to say nothin' about a friend. I only want to put you on your guard, that's all. You know there ain't nothin' I wouldn't do for you-no, not even if it cost me all the friends I got."

He passed his reins to his right hand and reaching across laid his left across one of hers, which she quickly withdrew.

"Please don't," she begged.

"I love you, Di," he blurted suddenly.

The girl laughed gaily, though not in derision. "All the men think they do. It's because I'm the only girl within miles and miles."

"You're the only girl in the world-for me."

She turned and looked at him quizzically. He was very handsome. That and his boyish, laughing manner had attracted her to him from the first. There had seemed a frankness and openness about him that appealed to her, and of all the men she knew, only excepting her father, he alone possessed anything approximating poise and selfconfidence in his intercourse with women. The others were either shy and blundering, or loud and coarse, or taciturn sticks like Bull, who seemed to be the only man on the ranch who was not desperately in love with her.

"We'll talk about something else," she announced.

"Isn't there any hope for me?" he asked.

"Why yes," she assured him. "I hope you will keep on loving me. I love to have people love me."

' 'But I don't want to do all the loving," he insisted.

"Don't worry-you're not. Even the cook is writing poems about me. Of all the foolish men I ever heard of Dad has certainly succeeded in corraling the prize bunch."

"I don't care a hang about that red-headed old fool of a cook," he snapped. "What I want is for you to love me."

"Oh, well, that's a horse of another color. Now we will have to change the subject."

"Please, Di, I'm in earnest," he pleaded; "won't you give me a little to hope for?"

"You never can tell about a girl, Hal," she said.

Her voice was tender and her eyes suddenly soft, and that was as near a promise as he could get.

As Bull urged Blazes up the rough trail of Cottonwood Canyon the continued crack of rifles kept the man apprised of the direction of the origin of the sounds and approximately of their ever lessening distance ahead. Presently he drew rein and, pulling his rifle from its boot, dismounted, dropping the reins upon the ground.

"Stand!" he whispered to Blazes and crept forward stealthily.

The shooting was close ahead now just around the brush-covered shoulder of a rocky hill. The detonations were less frequent. Bull guessed that by now both hunters and hunted were under cover and thus able to take only occasional pot shots at one another's refuse.

To come upon them directly up the trail in the bottom of the canyon would have been to expose himself to the fire of one side, and possibly of both, for in this untamed country it was easily conceivable that both sides of the controversy might represent interests inimical to those of his employer. With this idea in mind the ex-foreman of the Bar Y Ranch clambered cautiously up the steep side of the hill that hid from his view that part of the canyon lying just beyond.

From the varying qualities of the detonations the man had deduced that five and possibly six rifles were participating in the affair. How they were divided he could not even guess. He would have a look over the crest of the hog-back and if the affair was none of his business he would let the participants fight it out by themselves. Bull, sober, was not a man to seek trouble.

Climbing as noiselessly as possible and keeping the muzzle of his rifle ahead of him he came presently to the crest of the narrow ridge where he pushed his way cautiously through the brush toward the opposite side, passing around an occasional huge outcropping of rock that barred his progress. Presently the brush grew thinner. He could see the opposite wall of the canyon.

A sharp report sounded close below him, just over the brow of the ridge. In front of him a huge outcropping reared its weather-worn surface twenty feet above the brush.

Toward this he crept until he lay concealed behind it. Then, warily, he peered around the up-canyon edge discovering that his hiding place rested upon tire very edge of a steep declivity that dropped perpendicularly into the bottom of the canyon.