"Forty men spend thirty dollars apiece with yu every month."
The proprietor busied himself under the bar. "Yu'll feel better to-morrow. Anyway, what do yu care, yu won't lose yore job," he said, emerging.
Buck looked at him and frowned, holding back the words which formed in anger. What was the use, he thought, when every man judged the world in his own way.
"Have yu seen any of th' boys?" he asked, smiling again.
"Nary a boy. Who do yu reckon's doin' all this rustlin'?"
"I'm reckonin', not shoutin'," responded the foreman.
The proprietor looked out the window and grinned: "Here comes one of yourn now."
The newcomer stopped his horse in a cloud of dust, playfully kicked the animal in the ribs and entered, dusting the alkali from him with a huge sombrero. Then he straightened up and sniffed: "What's burnin'?" he asked, simulating alarm. Then he noticed the cigar between the teeth of his foreman and grinned: "Gee, but yore a brave man, Buck."
"Hullo, Hopalong," said the foreman. "Want a smoke?" waving his hand toward the box on the bar.
Mr. Hopalong Cassidy side-stepped and began to roll a cigarette: "Shore, but I'll burn my own—I know what it is."
"What was yu doin' to my cayuse afore yu come in?" asked Buck.
"Nothin'," replied the newcomer. "That was mine what I kicked in th' corrugations."
"How is it yore ridin' the calico?" asked the foreman. "I thought yu was dead stuck on that piebald."
"That piebald's a goat; he's beein livin' off my pants lately," responded Hopalong. "Every time I looks th' other way he ambles over and takes a bite at me. Yu just wait 'til this rustler business is roped, an' branded, an' yu'll see me eddicate that blessed scrapheap into eatin' grass again. He swiped Billy's
