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 stamp, "but it's a stud-horse now. Say, feller, you orta hear this old boy snort!"

"It's an old-timer, Peck, but it looks like a good one. Can you hit anything with it?"

"Sometimes," Peck confessed ingenuously. "But I'll bet you the pop I can throw a bluff with it as big as any man around here."

"I don't believe it would pay you to try it inside of Galloway's fence, Peck. When you pull your gun here you want to begin to shoot. They're not much on the bluff, I'm afraid. You know, I thought they'd run that band of sheep in on me. I took it so much for granted I never thought to look at the brand."

"You'll see another brand on 'em before long. I'm going to cut me a stencil out of a coal oil can and print capital Peck on the sides of them stews a foot high. I'll let that old woman see who's boss of this gang if she ever throws a leg over that fence."

"Maybe you've got a right to claim 'em, Peck. I don't know much about the law in such matters."

"Sure I have. What belongs to the wife belongs to the husband, but what the husband gits his paws on is his. It's going to be that way in this case, I don't give a dang what the law says."

They sat at breakfast, Rawlins with one leg in the door, his guns at hand, watchful against a surprise. Over across the creek Peck's sheep could be seen, making a cheerful picture in a landscape that Rawlins had found empty to lonesomeness in the days past.

"You've got a nice band of them there," he said.

"Yeah," Peck agreed, with the easy, way of a regular sheepman. "It's a good joke on the old