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 the places of the fifteen or twenty rustlers driven off or removed from the reckoning in other ways. Fred began to talk along this line.

"The old Diamond Tail's short-handed today," he said, "shorter than it's ever been since this company was organized. But them cattle's safer than they've been in many a day. If you was to leave 'em on the range without a man to watch 'em for the next year, Ed, you'd have more in the end than you would if Dale Findlay and that gang was steppin' around."

"I bet you," Barrett assented.

Dan came and sat with them, drumming boyishly on his plate for flapjacks, to which Alvino was treating them as a special favor that morning. The tragedies in other men's lives did not affect Dan's spirits, no matter how near to him the shadows fell.

"What're you goin' to do about puttin' somebody in Nearing's place?" Dan inquired.

"I don't know, Dan. That will have to be taken up with the stockholders; it will take time. I guess you and Fred and the rest of us that are not hung, will have to make a stagger at runnin' things till we get word from the men whose money is in the game."

"Well, ain't you one of 'em?" said Fred.

"I've only got a few chips, boys."

"I thought my wranglin' days was over, but if you need me, Ed," Fred offered.

"We need you, all right. What do you say, Dan?"

"I'm in. And you won't even have to fire that foreman to get me back—they laid him out over on the mesa yesterday. Say, there was a hole through that