Purvis frowned at him with narrowing eyes.

“Spit it out, Buck.  What’s the matter with me goin’ back for that gun?  Ain’t I apt to find it?”

“Sure.  That’s the point.  You’re apt to find lots of guns.  Here’s what I mean, Hal.  Some of the cowpunchers are beginnin’ to think I’m a little partial to Jim Silent’s crowd.  An’ they’re watchin’ my house.”

“The hell!”

“You’re right.  It is.  That’s one of the reasons I’m beatin’ it for the hills.”

He started his horse to a walk.  “But of course if you’re bound to have that gun, Hal—­”

Purvis grinned mirthlessly, his lean face wrinkling to the eyes, and he swung his horse in beside Buck.

“Anyway,” said Buck, “I’m glad to see you ain’t a fool.  How’s things at the camp?”

“Rotten.  They’s a girl up there—­”

“A girl?”

“You look sort of pleased.  Sure they’s a girl.  Kate Cumberland, she’s the one.  She seen us hold up the train, an’ now we don’t dare let her go.  She’s got enough evidence to hang us all if it came to a show-down.”

“Kate!  Delilah.”

“What you sayin’?”

“I say it’s damn queer that Jim’ll let a girl stay at the camp.”

“Can’t be helped.  She’s makin’ us more miserable than a whole army of men.  We had her in the house for a while, an’ then Silent rigged up the little shack that stands a short ways—­”

“I know the one you mean.”

“She an’ her dad is in that.  We have to guard ’em at night.  She ain’t had no good word for any of us since she’s been up there.  Every time she looks at a feller she makes you feel like you was somethin’ low-down—­a snake, or somethin’.”

“D’you mean to say none of the boys please her?” asked Buck curiously.  He understood from Dan’s delirious ravings that the girl was in love with Lee Haines and had deserted Barry for the outlaw.  “Say, ain’t Haines goodlookin’ enough to please her?”

Purvis laughed unpleasantly.

“He’d like to be, but he don’t quite fit her idea of a man.  We’d all like to be, for that matter.  She’s a ravin’ beauty, Buck.  One of these blue-eyed, yaller-haired kind, see, with a voice like silk.  Speakin’ personal, I’m free to admit she’s got me stopped.”

Buck drew so hard on the diminishing butt of his cigarette that he burned his fingers.

“Can’t do nothin’ with her?” he queried.

“What you grinnin’ about?” said Purvis hotly.  “D’you think you’d have any better luck with her?”

Buck chuckled.

“The trouble with you fellers,” he said complacently, “is that you’re all too damned afraid of a girl.  You all treat ’em like they was queens an’ you was their slaves.  They like a master.”

The thin lips of Purvis curled.

“You’re quite a man, ain’t you?”

“Man enough to handle any woman that ever walked.”

Purvis broke into loud laughter.