Bailey, plodding ahead and leading Frisco, chuckled.  “I’ll go you, Pete, but I want you to promise me somethin’.”

“Shoot!”

Bailey waited for Pete to come alongside.  “It’s this way, Pete—­and this here is plain outdoor talk, which you sabe.  Mrs. Bailey and me ain’t exactly hatin’ you, as you know.  But we would hate to see you get into trouble on account of Gary or any of the T-Bar-T boys.  And because you can shoot is a mighty good reason for you to go slow with that gun.  ’T ain’t that I give two whoops and a holler what happens to Gary.  It’s what might happen to you.  I was raised right here in this country and I know jest how those things go.  You’re workin’ for the Concho.  What you do, the Concho’s got to back up.  I couldn’t hold the boys if Gary got you, or if you got Gary.  They’d be hell a-poppin’ all over the range.  Speakin’ personal, I’m with you to the finish, for I know how you feel about Pop Annersley.  But you ain’t growed up yet.  You got plenty time to think.  If you are a-hankerin’ for Gary’s scalp, when you git to be twenty-one, why, go to it.  But you’re a kid yet, and a whole lot can happen in five or six years.  Mebby somebody’ll git Gary afore then.  I sure hope they do.  But while you’re worldly for me—­jest forget Gary.  I ain’t tellin’ you you got to.  I’m talkin’ as your friend.”

“I’ll go you,” said Pete slowly.  “But if Steve Gary comes at me—­”

“That’s different.  Let him talk—­and you keep still.  Keepin’ still at the right time has saved many a man’s hide.  Most folks talk too much.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE KITTY-CAT

Pete and Bailey took off their boots just before they entered the bunk-house.  They lugged the defunct mountain lion in and laid it by Bill Haskins’s bunk.

Pete propped the lion’s head up with one of Haskin’s boots.  The effect was realistic enough.  The lion lay stretched out in a most natural way, apparently gazing languidly at the sleeping cow-puncher.  This was more or less accidental, as they dare not light the lamp for fear of waking the men.  Bailey stole softly to the door and across to the house.  Pete undressed and turned in, to dream of who knows what ghostly lions prowling through the timberlands of the Blue Range.  It seemed but a few minutes when he heard the clatter of the pack-horse bell that Mrs. Bailey used to call the men to breakfast.  The chill gray half-light of early morning discovered him with one cautious eye, gazing across at Haskins, who still snored, despite the bell.  “Oh, Bill!” called Pete.  Haskins’s snore broke in two as he swallowed the unlaunched half and sat up rubbing his eyes.  He swung his feet down and yawned prodigiously.  “Heh—­hell!” he exclaimed as his bare feet touched the furry back of the lion.  Bill glanced down into those half-closed eyes.  His jaw sagged.  Then he bounded to the middle of the room.  With a whoop he dashed through the doorway, rounded into the open, and sprinted for the corral fence, his bare legs twinkling like the side-rods of a speeding locomotive and his shirt-tail fluttering in the morning breeze.  Andy White leaped from his bunk, saw the dead lion, and started to follow Haskins.  Another cowboy, Avery, was dancing on one foot endeavoring to don his overalls.