“I got my duty to my company,” Lanpher bluffed lamely.

“Duty bedam.  You ain’t got the guts for a tough job, that’s whatsa matter.”

This was rubbing it in.  Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang.  “I’ll show you whether I got guts—­” he began.

“Oh, look,” said Alicran.  “See that wild currant bush.”

To Lanpher it seemed that the sixshooter was barely out of the holster before it was back again.  But there was a swirl of smoke adrift in the windless air and the topmost branch of a wild currant bush thirty feet distant had been that instant cut in two.

“What was that you was gonna say?” Alicran prompted, softly.

“I forget,” evaded Lanpher.  “But they’s one thing you wanna remember, Alicran.  It don’t pay to be squeamish.  It comes high in the end usually.  You’ll find, if you keep on being mushy thisaway, that you’ll have more’n you can swing at the finish.”

“Is that so?  You leave me do things my own way, you hear?  Lemme tell you if I’d ‘a’ knowed all what you was up to by coming to Dale’s this mornin’ I’d never have allowed it.”

“Allowed it!”

“Yes, allowed it, I said.  Want me to spell it for you?  You thumb-handed idjit, if you had any more sense you’d be a damfool.  Don’t you know that in anything you do, no matter what, they’s no profit in unnecessary trimmings?  Most always it’s the extra frills on a feller’s work that pushes the bridge over and lands him underneath with everything on top of him and the job to do again, if he’s lucky enough to be livin’ at the finish.  And yore swashing through that girl’s gyarden was a heap unnecessary.  It was a close squeak you wasn’t drilled by Racey Dawson.  I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had let a little light in on yore darkened soul.  Done it myself in his place.  And yore rubbing in that mortgage deal was another unnecessary piece o’ damfoolishness.  It only made Racey have it in for you more’n ever.  And after acting like more kinds of a fool thataway in less time than anybody I ever see before, you sit up on yore hunkers and tell me I’ll have more’n I can swing at the finish.  Say, you make me laugh!  Listen, Lanpher, for a feller that’s come out second best with the Bar S outfit as many times as you have it looks to me like you was crowdin’ Providence a heap close.”

“That’s all right,” sulked Lanpher, then added, with a sudden flare of spite:  “When I hired you as foreman I shore never expected to draw a skypilot full o’ sermons into the bargain.”

“No?” drawled Alicran, looking hard at Lanpher.  “I often wonder just what you did hire me for.”

On which Lanpher made no comment.

“Yeah,” resumed Alicran, the fish having failed to bite, “I often wonder about that.  Was it a foreman you wanted or a—­gunman?  And what did Racey mean about Jack Harpe a-bearing down on you so hard, huh?”