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 ordered to take a chuck-wagon and supplies down to the Cimarron crossing by Moore, who had come home in a sweat and a stew about noon.

"There's goin' to be trouble down there, Mr. Dunham," she said, twisting her head to give her words gravity. "Them Texas fellers ain't the kind of men to be stopped after drivin' their cows all that ways. They'll fight. Somebody's goin' to git hurt, sure as shootin'."

"I wouldn't doubt it, ma'am," Bill agreed, thinking it looked like a pretty good line-up for trouble himself.

"Well, I can count on one that ain't a goin' to be hurt," she said with contemptuous confidence, "and that's my old man. He can smell powder furder 'n any man that ever was born. I'll bet that man can git in a crack you couldn't shove a caseknife through when bullets begin to hum, but to hear him talk and blow you'd think he was a big man from Bitter Crick. You take what he says in at one year and out at the other, Mr. Dunham, when he goes to tellin' you what he has done and's goin' to do. He's a powerful onery man."

Dunham was glad to have this confirmation from headquarters of his own private conclusions on Shad Brassfield's character. He took it for granted that the elastic word onery covered the trickery that was plain in Shad's shallow blue eyes, which were as shifty as botflies.

The boys came after Bill when they had put the horses away, so deferential in their manner that Mrs. Brassfield eyed them with suspicion. Dunham was