“What do you know?”

“What yo’re due to find out.”

“Now lookit here, Mr. Lanpher,” said the stranger in a low, cold tone, “you said those last words a leetle too gayful to suit me.  If yo’re planning any skulduggery—­don’t.”

“I ain’t.  Not a bit of it.  But I got my duty to my company.  I can’t get mixed up in any fraycas on yore account, because if I do my ranch will lose money.  That’s the flat of it.”

“Oh, it is, huh?  Yore ranch will lose money if you back me up, hey?  And you ain’t thinkin’ nothin’ of yore precious skin, are yuh?  Oh, no, not a-tall.  I wonder what yore company would say to the li’l deal between you and me that started this business.  I wonder what they’d think of Mr. Lanpher and his sense of duty.  Yeah, I would wonder a whole lot.”

“Well—­” began Lanpher, lamely.

“Hell!” snarled the stranger.  “You make me sick!  Now you listen to me.  Yo’re in this as deep as I am.  If you think you ain’t, try to pull yore wagon out.  Just try it, thassall.”

“I ain’t doing none of the work, that’s flat,” Lanpher denied, doggedly.

“You gotta back me up alla same,” declared the stranger.

“That wasn’t in the bargain,” fenced Lanpher.

“It is now,” chuckled the stranger.  “If I lose, you lose, too.  Lookit,” he added in a more conciliatory tone, “can’t you see how it is?  I need you, an’ you need me.  All I’m asking of you is to back me up when I want you to.  Outside of that you can sit on yore shoulder-blades and enjoy life.”

“We didn’t bargain on that,” harked back Lanpher.

“But that was then, and this is now.  Which may not be logic, but it is necessity, an’ Necessity, Mr. Lanpher, is the mother of all kinds of funny things.  So you and I we got to ride together.”

Lanpher pushed back his hat and looked over the hills and far away.  The well-known carking care was written large upon his countenance.

Slowly his eyes slid round to meet for a brief moment the eyes of his companion.

“I can’t answer for my men,” said Lanpher, shortly.

“Can you answer for yoreself?” inquired the stranger quickly.

“I’ll back you up.”  Grudgingly.

“Then that’s all right.  You can keep the men from throwing in with the other side, anyway, can’t you?”

“I can do that much.”

“Which is quite a lot for a ranch manager to be able to do,” was the stranger’s blandly sarcastic observation.  “C’mon.  We’ve gassed so much I’m dry as a covered bridge.  I—­What does Thompson want now?  ’Lo, Punch.”

“’Lo, Jack.  Howdy, Lanpher.”  Racey could not see the newcomer, but he recognized the voice.  It was that of Punch-the-breeze Thompson, a gentleman well known to make his living by the ingenious capitalization of an utter lack of moral virtue.  “Say, Jack,” continued Thompson, “Nebraska has been plugged.”

“Plugged?” Great amazement on the part of the stranger.