“Better not get on the prod with me, young fellow me lad.  I’m liable to muss up your hair.  Me, I’m from the Strip, where folks grow man-size.”

The youngster smiled, but there was no mirth in that thin-lipped smile.  He knew, as all men did, that the Cherokee Strip was the home of desperadoes and man-killers.  The refuse of the country, driven out by the law of more settled communities, found here a refuge from punishment.  But if the announcement of the foreman impressed him, he gave no sign of it.

“Why didn’t you stay there?” he asked with bland innocence.

Yankie grew apoplectic.  He did not care to discuss the reasons why he had first gone to the Strip or the reasons why he had come away.  This girl-faced boy was the only person who had asked for a bill of particulars.  Moreover, the foreman did not know whether the question had been put in child-like ignorance of any possible offense or with an impudent purpose to enrage him.

“Don’t run on the rope when I’m holdin’ it, kid,” he advised roughly.  “You’re liable to get thrown hard.”

“And then again I’m liable not to,” lisped the youth from Arizona gently.

The bully looked the slim newcomer over again, and as he looked there rang inside him some tocsin of warning.  Thursday sat crouched in the saddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike.  A sawed-off shotgun lay under his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was even closer to those smooth, girlish fingers.  In the immobility of his figure and the steadiness of the blue eyes was a deadly menace.

Yankie was no coward.  He would go through if he had to.  But there was still time to draw back if he chose.  He was not exactly afraid; on the other hand, he did not feel at all easy.

He contrived a casual, careless laugh.  “All right, kid.  I don’t have to rob the cradle to fill my private graveyard.  Go get your Injuns.  It will be all right with me.”

Webb drew a breath of relief.  There was to be no gunplay after all.  He had had his own reasons for not interfering sooner, but he knew that the situation had just grazed red tragedy.

“I’m goin’ to take the boy’s advice,” he announced to Yankie.  “Ride forward an’ swing the herd toward that big red butte.  We’ll give our Mescalero friends a wide berth if we can.”

The foreman hung in the saddle a moment before he turned to go.  He had to save his face from a public back-down, “Bet you a week’s pay there’s nothin’ to it, Webb.”

“Hope you’re right, Joe,” his employer answered.

As soon as Yankie had cantered away, Dad Wrayburn, ex-Confederate trooper, slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a modulated rebel yell.

“Dad burn my hide, Jimmie-Go-Get-’Em, you’re all right.  Fustest time I ever saw Joe take water, but he shorely did splash some this here occasion.  I wouldn’t ‘a’ missed it for a bunch of hog-fat yearlin’s.”