"Knew it all the time. Yore play gave it away," jeered Bandy with obvious ill-temper.

"I reckon that's why you kept raisin'," Dud suggested, raking in the pot.

"All I needed was to hook a jack or another pair to beat you."

"If I didn't catch another ace or a small pair."

The game was breaking up.

"Hell! I was playin' poker before you could navigate, young fellow,"

Bandy boasted. He had lost four dollars and was annoyed.

"An' you're still an optimist about hookin' another pair when you need 'em." Dud was counting his winnings placidly. "Six-fifty--seven--seven and two bits. Wish I had yore confidence in the music of the spears workin' out so harmonious."

This last was a reference to a book left at the ranch recently by the Reverend Melancthon Browning, the title of which was, "The Music of the Spheres." Its philosophy was that every man makes his own world by the way he thinks about it.

Bandy jingled back to his bunk. He unstrapped his spurs, hooked one foot behind the knee of the other leg, and tried to work the wet boot off. The slippery leather stuck.

He called to Bob. "Come here, fellow, an' yank this boot off for me."

Dillon did not move. His heart stood still, then began to race. A choking filled his throat. The hour was striking for him. It was to be now or never.

The bow-legged puncher slewed his head. "I'm talkin' to you."

Slowly, reluctantly, Bob rose. He did not want to move. Something stronger than his will lifted him out of the bed and dragged him across the floor. He knew his hands were trembling.

Malignant triumph rode in Bandy's eye. It was always safe to bully this timid youth. Dud Hollister had a "No Trespass" sign displayed in his quiet, cool manner. Very well. He would take it out of his riding mate.

That was one way of getting at him.

"What's ailin' you? Git a move on. You act like you'd like to tell me to go take a walk. I'll bet you would, too, if you wasn't such a rabbit heart."

Bob stooped and picked up the dirty boot. He zigzagged it from the foot.

As he straightened again his eyes met those of Dud. He felt a roaring in the temples.

"O' course any one that'd let another fellow take his wife from him--an'

him not married more'n an hour or two--"

The young fellow did not hear the end of the cruel gibe. The sound of rushing waters filled his ears. He pulled off the second boot.

Again his gaze met that of Hollister. He remembered Dud's words. "Crawl his hump sudden. Go to it like a wild cat." The trouble was he couldn't.

His muscles would not obey the flaccid will.

The flood of waters died down. The roaring ceased. The puncher's words came to him clear.

"... not but what she was likely glad enough to go with Jake. She was out with him four-five hours. Where was they, I ask? What was they doing? You can't tell me she couldn't 'a' got away sooner if she'd wanted to so darned bad. No, sir, I'm no chicken right out of a shell. When it comes to a woman I say, Where's the man?"

A surge of anger welled up in Dillon and overflowed. He forgot about Dud and his threats. He forgot about his trepidation. This hound was talking of June, lying about her out of his foul throat.

One of the boots was still in his hand. He swung it round and brought the heel hard against the fellow's mouth. The blood gushed from the crushed lips. Bob dropped the boot and jolted his left to the cheek. He followed with a smashing right to the eye.

Taken at disadvantage, Bandy tried to struggle to his feet. He ran into one straight from the shoulder that caught the bridge of his nose and flung him back upon the bunk.

His hand reached under the pillow. Bob guessed what was there and dropped hard with both knees on his stomach.

The breath went out of Bandy suddenly. He lay still for a moment. When he began to struggle again he had forgotten the revolver under the pillow.

With a sweeping gesture Bob brushed pillow and gun to the floor.

The man underneath twisted his red, wrinkled neck and bit Bob's forearm savagely. The boy's fingers closed like a vice on the hairy throat and tightened. His other fist beat a merciless tattoo on the bruised and bleeding face.

"Take him off!" Bandy presently gasped.

Dud appointed himself referee. With difficulty he unloosed the fingers embedded in the flesh of the throat.

"Had enough, Bandy? You licked?" he asked.

"Take him off, I tell you!" the man managed to scream.

"Not unless you're whipped. How about it?"

"'Nough," the bully groaned.

Bob observed that Hawks had taken charge of the revolver. He released Walker.

The bow-legged puncher sat at the side of the bed and coughed. The blood was streaming from a face bruised and cut in a dozen places.

"He--he--jumped me--when I wasn't lookin'," the cowboy spat out, a word at a time.

"Don't pull an alibi, Bandy. You had it comin'," Dud said with a grin. He was more pleased than he could tell.

Dillon felt as though something not himself had taken control of him. He was in a cold fury, ready to fight again at the drop of a hat.

"He said she--she--" The sentence broke, but Bob rushed into another.

"He's got to take it back or I'll kill him."

"Only the first round ended, looks like, Bandy," Dud said genially. "You better be lookin' this time when he comes at you, or he'll sure eat you alive."

"I'm not lookin' for no fight," Bandy said sulkily, dabbing at his face with the bandanna round his neck.

"I'll bet you ain't--not with a catamount like Miss Roberta here," Tom Reeves said, chuckling with delight.

One idea still obsessed Bob's consciousness. "What he said about June--I'll not let him get away with it. He's got to tell you-all he was lyin'."

"You hear yore boss speak, Bandy," drawled Dud. "How about it? Do we get to see you massacreed again? Or do you stand up an' admit you're a dirty liar for talkin' thataway?"

Bandy Walker looked round on a circle of faces all unfriendly to him. He had broken the code, and he knew it. In the outdoor West a man does not slander a good woman without the chance of having to pay for it. The puncher had let his bad bullying temper run away with him. He had done it because he had supposed Dillon harmless, to vent on him the spleen he could not safely empty upon Dud Hollister's blond head.

If Bob had been alone the bow-legged man might have taken a chance--though it is doubtful whether he would have invited that whirlwind attack again, unless he had had a revolver close at hand--but he knew public sentiment was wholly against him. There was nothing to do but to swallow his words.

That he did this in the most ungracious way possible was like him. "Since you're runnin' a Sunday School outfit I'll pack my roll an' move on to-morrow to where there's some he-men," he sneered. "I never met this girl, so I don't know a thing about her. All I did was to make a general remark about women. Which same I know to be true. But since you're a bunch of sky pilots at the Slash Lazy D, I'll withdraw anything that hurts yore tender feelin's."