“Are you dead set on working for the Bar S or the Cross-in-a-box?”

“I ain’t dead set on working for anybody.  Work ain’t a habit with either of us, but so long as we got to work the ranches with good cooks have the call, and the Bar S and Richie’s outfit have special good cooks.”

The stranger nodded and began to smooth down, hand over hand, his tousled hair.  It was very thick hair, oily and coarse.  When sufficiently smoothed it presented that shiny, slick appearance so much admired in the copper-toed, black walnut era.

Not till each and every lock lay in perfect adjustment with its neighbour did the stranger speak.

“Cooks mean a whole lot,” was his opening remark.  “A good one can come mighty nigh holding a outfit together.  Money ain’t to be sneezed at, neither.  Good wages paid on the nail run the cook a close second.  How would you boys like to work for me?”

The stranger, as he asked the question, fixed Racey with his black eyes.  The puncher felt as if a steel drill were boring into his brain.  But he returned the stare without appreciable effort.  Racey Dawson was not of those that lower their eyes to any man.

“I take it,” drawled Racey, “that you’re fixing to install all the comforts of home you were just now talking about—­a good cook and better wages for the honest working-man?”

“Naturally I am.”  The stranger’s eyes shifted to Swing Tunstall’s face.

“Yeah—­naturally.”  Thus Racey Dawson.  The stranger’s eyes returned quickly to Racey.  There had been a barely perceptible pause between the two words uttered by Racey Dawson.  Pauses signify a great deal at times.  This might be one of those times and it might not.  The stranger couldn’t be sure.  From that moment the stranger watched Racey Dawson even as the proverbial cat watches the mouse hole.

Racey knew that the stranger was watching him.  And he knew why.  So he smiled with bland stupidity and nodded a foolish head.

“What wages?” he inquired.

“Fifty per,” was the reply.

“Where?”

“Southeast of Dogville—­the Rafter H ranch.”

“The Rafter H, huh?  I thought that was Haley’s outfit.”

“I expect to buy out Haley,” explained the stranger, smoothly.  “My name’s Harpe, Jack Harpe.  What may I call you gents?...  Dawson and Tunstall, eh?  I—­”

“Haley ain’t much better than a nester,” interrupted Racey.  “He don’t own more’n forty cows.  What you want with two punchers for a small bunch like that—­and at fifty per?”

“I know she ain’t much of a ranch now,” admitted Jack Harpe.  “But everything has to have a beginning.  I’m figuring on a right smart growth for the Rafter H within the next year or two.”

“Figuring on opposition maybe?” probed Racey Dawson.

“You never can tell.”

“You can if you go to cutting any of Baldy Barbee’s corners.  Haley’s little bunch never bothers Baldy none, but a man-size outfit so close to the south thataway would shore give him something to think about.  Then there’s the Anvil ranch east of the B bar B. They’ll begin to scratch their heads, you bet.  Hall, too, maybe, although he is a good ways to the east.”