When the boys returned from the corral they found that Mrs. Graham and
Stella and their escorts had preempted a vacant corner.

There was a piano in the room, but no one to play it.  Soon, however, a fellow dressed after the cowboy fashion entered and took a seat on a raised platform, producing a fiddle from a green bag.

A round of applause greeted him.

He tuned his instrument, and after a few preliminary scrapes began to play a monotonous tune, repeating over and over again the same few bars.

At the first scrape the cowboys and their girls leaped to the floor and began to dance, but none of the people from the fort cared to dance to such music.

Suddenly the door flew open and a band of a dozen cow-punchers walked into the room, and were greeted by joyous shouts by the other cowboys in the hall.

At their head was a handsome young fellow, slender and dark, with a resolute face and a pair of piercing eyes that flashed around the room for the purpose of seeing and locating his possible enemies.

“Who is that?” asked Stella.

“That’s Billy Sudden,” answered Ted.

“And who is he?”

“Foreman at ‘Cow’ Suggs’ ranch.  That’s the Suggs bunch of cow-punchers.  There’ll be something doing here to-night.”

“Why?”

“There are a lot of fellows in this part of the country who don’t like Billy, and some of them are liable to tread on his feet.”

“Oh, is he quarrelsome?”

“No, Billy is the best sort of a fellow, but he won’t let any one hobble him.  When he first went to the Dumb-bell Ranch, as the Circle-bar Circle is called, they took him for a kid and tried to run over him.  He kicked them, then fired them, and they don’t like him.”

“Did you see him look around the room?”

“Yes, he has every man who is likely to make trouble for him spotted and located.  But we won’t wait long enough to see the trouble.  I never did like trouble myself.”

“Well, for a chap who gets into it as often as you do—­”

“What’s the trouble now, over there?” interrupted Ted, looking at the door.

Around the entrance to the hall was a crowd of young town fellows led by a youth named Wiley Creviss, the son of the local banker, a dissipated and reckless young man, and a crowd of cow-punchers.

They were shoving some one here and there, making a punching bag of him, at the same time laughing uproariously.

Just then Ted saw the head of Jack Slate in the mix-up.

“Excuse me,” said Ted, turning to Stella.  “Ben, take care of the ladies until I return.”

He strode across the floor toward the door.

As he neared it he heard Billy Sudden say: 

“Be careful, there.  That is one of Ted Strong’s fellows.”

“I don’t care if it is,” said some one.  “I’d give it to Strong just as hard if he was here.”