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 much interested in helpin' you get your cattle to Pawnee Bend on your account as I am on my own."

"I'm willin' to make it worth while to you, Dunham." Hughes turned to him slowly, taking his eyes reluctantly from the straggling line of stumpy cottonwoods, a light of understanding appearing to break in them suddenly. "If this is part of the hold-up, if this is you fellers' way—"

"I'm not biddin' for money—I'd see you in hell before I'd take a dime!" Dunham cut in, almost losing the rein over his temper there. He grabbed it again, frantically, feeling himself cooling from the nose downward, in that easing relief that comes over a man when he has rushed to save something and found it safe.

"How in the hell do we know what you're out for?" said Bob, resenting this vehement protestation.

"There's a man on the other side of that river I want to ride till he slobbers like a clovered horse," Dunham said, ignoring Bob, looking in his turn at the sentinel cottonwoods along the weak little river which was a barrier that day between so many men and their desires. "I want to ride that man till his head hangs so low his tongue'll lop the road when he walks! I want to soak him so hard he'll walk knock-kneed all the rest of his life. If I can bust that man I'll bust him, and that's what I'm over here to try."

Hughes looked at him with the slow-waking expression of a man who is beginning to see things in their proper shape. Dunham didn't wait for yea, nay nor maybeso, but pushed on with his bill of intentions.

"Your dang cattle may be clean and they may be