"L-listen, Dud. That boy's what they call c-c-constitutionally timid.

There's folks that way, born so a shadow scares 'em. But he's s-s-sensitive as a g-girl. Don't you make any mistake, son. He's been eatin' his h-heart out ever since he crawled before Houck. I like that boy. There's good s-stuff in him. At least I'm makin' a bet there is.

Question is, will it ever get a chance to show? Inside of three months he'll either win out or he'll be headed for hell, an' he won't be travelin' at no drift-herd gait neither."

"Every man's got to stand on his own hind laigs, ain't he?" Hollister grunted. He was weakening, and he knew it.

"He needs a friend, worst way," Blister wheezed. "'Course, if you'd rather not--"

"Doggone yore hide, you're always stickin' me somehow," stormed the cowboy. "Trouble with me is I'm so soft I'm always gettin' imposed on. I done told you I didn't like this guy a-tall. That don't make no more impression on you than a cold runnin'-iron would on a cow."

"M-much obliged, Dud. I knew you'd do it."

"I ain't said I'd do it."

"S-some of the boys are liable to get on the prod with him. He'll have to play his own hand. Tha's reasonable. But kinda back him up when you get a chance. That notion of lettin' him lick you is a humdinger. Glad you thought of it."

"I didn't think of it, an' I ain't thinkin' of it now," Dud retorted.

"You blamed old fat skeezicks, you lay around figurin' out ways to make me trouble. You're worse than Mrs. Gillespie for gettin' yore own way.

Hmp! Devil him into a fight an' then let him hand me a lacin'. I reckon not."

"He'll figure that since he can lick you, he can make out to look after himself with the other boys."

"He ain't licked me yet, an' that's only half of it. He ain't a-goin'

to."

Fuming at this outrageous proposition put up to him, the puncher jingled away and left his triple-chinned friend.

Blister grinned. The seed he had scattered might have fallen among the rocks and the thorns, but he was willing to make a small bet with himself that some of it had lit on good ground and would bear fruit.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BACK OF A BRONC

The bunkhouse of the Slash Lazy D received Bob Dillon gravely and with chill civility. He sat on his bunk that first evening, close enough to touch a neighbor on either hand, and was left as completely out of the conversation as though he were a thousand miles away. With each other the riders were jocular and familiar. They "rode" one another with familiar jokes. The new puncher they let alone.

Bob had brought some cigars with him. He offered them eagerly to the chap-clad youth on his right. "Take one, won't you? An' pass the others round."

The name of the cowboy was Hawks. He looked at the cigars with disfavor.

"I reckon I'll not be carin' for a cigar to-night, thank you," he said slowly.

"Perhaps the others--if you'll pass them."

Hawks handed the cigars to a brick-red Hercules patching his overalls.

From him they went to his neighbor. Presently the cheroots came back to their owner. They had been offered to every man in the room and not one had been taken.

Bob's cheeks burned. Notice was being served on him that the pleasant give-and-take of comradeship was not for him. The lights went out early, but long into the night the boy lay awake in torment. If he had been a leper the line could scarcely have been drawn more plainly. These men would eat with him because they must. They would sleep in the same room.

They would answer a question if he put it directly. But they would neither give nor accept favors. He was not to be one of them.

Many times in the months that were to follow he was to know the sting of shame that burned him now at memory of the scene between him and Jake Houck at Bear Cat. He tossed on the bunk, burying his face in the blankets in a vain effort to blot out the picture. Why had he not shot the fellow? Why, at least, had he not fought? If he had done anything, but what he did do? If he had even stuck it out and endured the pain without yielding.

In the darkness he lived over every little incident of the evening. When Hawks had met him he had grinned and hoped he would like the Slash Lazy D. There had been friendliness in the crinkled, leathery face. But when he passed Bob ten minutes later the blue eyes had frozen. He had heard who the new rider was.

He would not stand it. He could not. In the morning he would pack up his roll and ride back to Bear Cat. It was all very well for Blister Haines to talk about standing the gaff, but he did not have to put up with such treatment.

But when morning came Bob set his teeth and resolved to go through with it for a while anyhow. He could quit at any time. He wanted to be able to tell the justice that he had given his plan a fair trial.

In silence Bob ate his breakfast. This finished, the riders moved across to the corral.

"Better rope and saddle you a mount," Harshaw told his new man curtly.

"Buck, you show him the ones he can choose from."

Hawks led the way to a smaller corral. "Any one o' these except the roan with the white stockings an' the pinto," he said.

Dillon walked through the gate of the enclosure and closed it. He adjusted the rope, selected the bronco that looked to him the meekest, and moved toward it. The ponies began to circle close to the fence. The one he wanted was racing behind the white-stockinged roan. For a moment it appeared in front. The rope snaked out and slid down its side. Bob gathered in the lariat, wound it, waited for a chance, and tried again.

The meek bronco shook its head as the rope fell and caught on one ear. A second time the loop went down into the dust.

Some one laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day's work, were sitting at ease in their saddles enjoying the performance.

Bob gave himself to the job in hand, though his ears burned. As a youngster he had practiced roping. It was a pastime of the boys among whom he grew up. But he had never been an expert, and now such skill as he had acquired deserted him. The loop sailed out half a dozen times before it dropped over the head of the sorrel.

The new rider for the Slash Lazy D saddled and cinched a bronco which no longer took an interest in the proceedings. Out of the corner of his eye, without once looking their way, Bob was aware of subdued hilarity among the bronzed wearers of chaps. He attended strictly to business.

Just before he pulled himself to the saddle Bob felt a momentary qualm at the solar plexus. He did not give this time to let it deter him. His feet settled into the stirrups. An instant violent earthquake disturbed his equilibrium. A shock jarred him from the base of the spine to the neck.

Urgently he flew through space.

Details of the landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces.

A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out against them.

Out of the mists of memory he heard a wheezy voice issuing from a great bulk of a man--"... yore red haid's covered with glory. Snap it up!" The words came so clear that for an instant he was startled. He looked round half expecting to see Blister.

Stiffly he gathered himself out of the snow slush. A pain jumped in the left shoulder. He limped to the rope and coiled it. The first cast captured the sorrel.

His limbs were trembling when he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist.

The rider shot from the saddle.

When the scenery had steadied itself for Dillon he noticed languidly a change in one aspect of it. The faces turned toward him were no longer grinning. They were watching him expectantly. What would he do now?

They need not look at him like that. He was through. If he got on the back of that brute again it would kill him. Already he was bleeding at the nose and ears. Sometimes men died just from the shock of being tossed about so furiously.

The sorrel was standing by itself at the other end of the corral. Its head was drooping languidly. The bronco was a picture of injured innocence.

Bob discovered that he hated it with an impotent lust to destroy. If he had a gun with him--Out of the air a squeaky voice came to him: "C-clamp yore jaw, you worm! You been given dominion." And after that, a moment later, "... made in the image of God."

Unsteadily he rose. The eyes of the Slash Lazy D riders watched him relentlessly and yet curiously. Would he quit? Or would he go through?

He had an odd feeling that his body was a thing detached from himself. It was full of aches and pains. Its legs wobbled as he moved. Its head seemed swollen to twice the normal size. He had strangely small control over it. When he walked, it was jerkily, as a drunk man sometimes does.