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 man in his undignified plight. A prank like this was accounted the rarest humor in the gentle relaxations of the range; Maud had been familiar with such jokes all her life. There was no point in a joke, in the humor of the old-time cowboy, that did not give the victim of it pain. The greater the suffering, the funnier the situation.

"It's Withers!" Louise whispered.

"It sure does favor him," said Maud, her grin spreading so big it seemed to push her ears back.

Withers had not been expecting women, and least of all women these two. It was just about the same to him in his extremity as if Tom Laylander had come back to taunt him in his agony of thirst and raging passion against the ropes that held him. He stood panting, lopping forward in exhaustion as far as the slack of the ropes would let him go, as miserable an object as pity ever looked upon.

Withers lifted his head after a few moments of shamed silence. It was evident that he was suffering more from his own rage than from the galling of the ropes. To sun and thirst he was hardened; he could have stood against them with any man that ever rode the range. But he was unused to humiliation, unaccustomed to having his rough-shod will bent for even a few hours from its way of going where it would.

Louise was moved by the cruelty practiced against him, unworthy of all compassion as she knew him to be. He appeared so entirely abject and ashamed, and