“I see.  It he had taken the gun, Meldrum might have thought he was afraid of him.”

“Now you’re shouting.  As it is the bad man is backed clear off the earth.  It’s like as if your partner said, ’Garnish yourself with forty-fours if you like, but don’t get gay around me.’”

“So you think—­”

“I think he’s some bear-cat, that young fellow.  When you ’re looking for something easy to mix with, go pick a grizzly or a wild cat, but don’t you monkey with friend Beaudry.  He’s liable to interfere with your interior geography. . . .  Say, Dingwell.  Do I get to cull this bunch of longhorn skeletons you’re misnaming cattle?”

“You do not.”

The Denver man burlesqued a sigh.  “Oh, well!  I’ll go broke dealing with you unsophisticated Shylocks of the range.  The sooner the quicker.  Send ’em down to the siding.  I’ll take the bunch.”

Roy rode up on a pinto.

“Help!  Help!” pleaded the Coloradoan of the young man.

“He means that I’ve unloaded this corral full of Texas dinosaurs on him at nineteen a throw.” explained Dave.

“You’ve made a good bargain,” Beaudry told the buyer.

“’Course he has, and he knows it.”  Dingwell opened on Roy his gay smile.  “I hear you’ve had a run-in with the bad man of Chicito Canon, son.”

Roy looked at the Denver man reproachfully.  Ever since the affair on the station platform he had been flogging himself because he had driven away and left Meldrum in possession of the field.  No doubt all Battle Butte knew now how frightened he had been.  The women were gossiping about it over their tea, probably, and men were retailing the story in saloons and on sidewalks.

“I didn’t want any trouble,” he said apologetically.  “I—­I just left him.”

“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” assented Dave dryly.  “You merely showed him up for a false alarm and kicked him into the discard.  That’s good, and it’s bad.  We know now that Meldrum won’t fight you in the open.  You’ve got him buffaloed.  But he’ll shoot you in the back if he can do it safely.  I know the cur.  After this don’t ride alone, Roy, and don’t ride that painted hoss at all.  Get you a nice quiet buckskin that melts into the atmosphere like a patch of bunch grass.  Them’s my few well-chosen words of advice, as Manana Bill used to say.”

Three days later Beaudry, who had been superintending the extension of an irrigation ditch, rode up to the porch of the Lazy Double D ranch house and found Hal Rutherford, senior, with his chair tilted back against the wall.  The smoke of his pipe mingled fraternally with that of Dingwell’s cigar.  He nodded genially to Roy without offering to shake hands.