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 "He might forget to do it after I'm done with him."

He stood looking into the enclosure while Rumpety unharnessed "the critters" and put them up in an open shed.

The corral was a comfortless, tumble-down place. The outlines of the crazy huts and sheds which enclosed it on three sides showed clear in the starlight. A gaunt plough-horse stood motionless in the cold shelter of a skeleton hay-wagon; in one corner a drinking-trough gleamed, one solid mass of ice. And now across this dreary, God-forsaken stage passed the warmly clad, stalwart figure that Fate was waiting for. Rankin noted that he held the whip still in his hand as he made for the door of the cabin.

Suddenly Rankin blocked his path.

"You cur!"

The words were flung like a missile into the face of the brute.

With a cry of inarticulate rage Rumpety raised his long whip, and then, coward that he was, let it fall.

Rankin never had a very clear idea of what happened next. Somehow or other he had torn the coat off the man's back, had bound him with the lasso to a corner of the hay