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 the dark blotch the big herd made on its bedding-ground, dim through the night.

"So, if you're on the square, Dunham," he said by way of finality, "and want to prove it, figure out some way to get that herd across the river and on the trail to Pawnee Bend."

Hughes said this in a grim jesting way, as if proposing what he knew to be at once beyond the inclination and limitations of the man addressed. Dunham felt it as a taunt and a mockery, as if Hughes had said: "You're crooked, and I know it, but we are gentlemen. We scorn you, and let you go your way."

But that proposal, mockingly made, set the wheel of Dunham's thoughts turning. He got out his new blankets and stretched himself on a cowboy's bed for the first time in his life, to lie for hours looking at the stars, planning and plotting, scheming and devising, not toward any undertaking that might add to his own fame or profit, but to some bold stratagem or shrewd maneuver that would humble the loud arrogance of John Moore and make his name a jest on the tongues of men.