So the first impression of Red Jim was created on the ranch, an impression which might be dispelled by the first real test of the man, or which in the absence of such a test might cling to him forever:  Perris was a conceited gun-fighter, heart-breaker, and bully.  The men who trooped into the bunkhouse behind him already hated him with a religious intensity; in ten minutes, they might have accepted him as a bunkie!  For your true Western cowpuncher, when all is said and done, unites with Spartan stoicism a Spartan keenness of suspicion.

It was not hard for the foreman to see the trend of events.  Something had roused an ugly mood in Perris.  It might be, as he surmised, the girl.  No matter what, he was obviously not in a mood to bear tampering with.  Hervey determined to force the issue at once, knowing that his other men would be a solid unit behind him.

“Hey there, Red!” he called, cheerily enough, but brusquely, and then, bending over to fuss at a spur, he winked broadly at the other men.  They were instantly keen for the baiting of Perris, whatever form it might take.

“Well?” said Red Perris.

“Trot over to the corral and rope that Roman-nosed buckskin with the white stockings on her forelegs, will you?  I got a few things to tend to in here.”

Now there was nothing entirely unheard of in a foreman ordering one of his men to catch a saddle horse for him.  But usually such things were done by request rather than demand, and moreover, there was something so breezy in the manner of Hervey, taking the compliance of Red so for granted, that the latter raised his head slowly and turned to the foreman with a gloomy eye.  He had come to the ranch to hunt a wild horse, not to play valet to a foreman.

“Partner,” drawled Red Perris, and the silken smoothness of his tones was ample proof that he was enraged.  “I don’t know the ways you folks have up here, but around the parts where I’ve been, a gent that’s big enough to ride is big enough to saddle his own hoss.”

The reply of Lew Hervey was just sharp enough to goad the newcomer—­just soft enough to stay on the windward side of an insult.

“I’ll tell you,” he said quietly.  “Around the Valley of the Eagles, the boys do what the foreman asks ’em to do, most generally.  And the foreman don’t play favorites.  I’m waiting for that hoss, Perris.”

Perris rolled a cigarette, and smiled as he looked at Hervey.  It was a sickly smile, his lips being white and stiff.  And in another, it might have been considered a sign of fear.  In Red Perris everyone there knew it was simply the badge of a rising fury.  They knew, by the same token, that he was as dangerous as he had been advertised.  Men whom anger reddens are blinded by it; but those who turn pale never stop thinking.  Meantime, Red Jim looked at Hervey and looked at the cowpunchers behind Hervey.  It was not hard to see that in a pinch they would be solid behind their foreman.  They watched him with a wolfish eagerness.  Why they should be so instantly hostile he could not guess but he was enough of a traveller to be prepared for strange customs in strange places.  There was only one important point:  he would not saddle the buckskin.  Moreover, at sight of their solid front and their aggressive sneers he grew fighting hot.