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 humble as if she had a rope on him, thrown and hoghobbled and conquered past all hope.

"You certainly can pull a gun in a hurry, kid," she said. "You must 'a' had a whole lot of practice in your time. But you mustn't get the big notion you're too darned good at it," she hastened to amend.

"I don't suppose it takes any special amount of brains to pull a gun fast," he allowed. "Well, I guess I might as well walk on till I come to the next place where a train stops, and pull my freight out of this country."

"Why, don't you want the job?"

"Which job?"

"The one I hired you for a little while ago."

"I thought you was just stringin' me along," he said foolishly. "Well, I'm green, but I'm willin'. What kind of a job is it?"

"We'll walk on down the road and I'll tell you. I told Mr. MacKinnon we'd walk on toward the ranch if I could get your gun away from you. Pa and Shad Brassfield will pick us up when they come along."

The cattlemen of southwestern Kansas, she told him, had formed an alliance for the purpose of making a concerted stand that summer against trail herds from Texas being driven across the range to the railroad loading-points. Last summer Kansas cattlemen had suffered heavy losses from Texas fever, many of them being practically ruined. Nobody could explain it, but there was some kind of infection carried by cattle from south of a certain line in Texas, to which they themselves were immune, which seemed to blow