his long body where hunger, or pain, or mischance had doubled him over in the past, and left him creased. The strong light of the room found pepperings of gray in his thick and long black hair.

Chadron himself was a gray man, with a mustache and beard like a cavalier. His shrewd eyes were sharp and bright under heavy brows, his brown face was toughened by days in the saddle through all seasons of weather and wind. His shoulders were broad and heavy, and even now, although not dressed for the saddle, there was an up-creeping in the legs of his trousers, and a gathering at the knees of them, for they were drawn down over his tall boots.

That was Chadron’s way of doing the nice thing when he went abroad in his buckboard. He had saddle manners and buckboard manners, and even office manners when he met the cattle barons in Cheyenne. No matter what manners he chanced to be wearing, one remembered Saul Chadron after meeting him, and carried the recollection of him to the sundown of his day.

“We can talk here,” said Chadron, giving the other a cigar.

The tall man broke the cigar and ground part of it in his palm, looking with frowning thoughtfulness into the empty fireplace as the tobacco crushed in his hard hand. He filled the pipe that he had chosen, and sat with his long legs stretched out toward the chimney-mouth.

“Well, go on and talk,” said he.

His voice came smothered and hoarse, as if it lay beneath all the oysters which he had rammed into his unseen hollow. It was a voice in strange harmony with the man, such a sound as one would have 5 expected to come out of that surly, dark-lipped, thin mouth. There was nothing committal about it, nothing exactly identifying; an impersonal voice, rather, and cold; a voice with no conscience behind it, scarcely a soul.

“You’re a business man, Mark—”

“Huh!” said Mark, grunting a little cloud of smoke from the bowl of his pipe in his sarcastic vehemence.

“And so am I,” continued Chadron, unmoved. “Words between us would be a waste of time.”

“You’re right; money talks,” said Mark.

“It’s a man’s job, or I wouldn’t have called you out of your hole to do it,” said Chadron, watching the man slyly for the effect.

“Pay me in money,” suggested Mark, unwarmed by the compliment. “Is it nesters ag’in?”

“Nesters,” nodded the cattleman, drawing his great brows in a frown. “They’re crowdin’ in so thick right around me that I can’t breathe comfortable any more; the smell of ’em’s in the wind. They’re runnin’ over three of the biggest ranches up here besides the Alamito, and the Drovers’ Association wants a little of your old-time holy scare throwed into the cussed coyotes.”

Mark nodded in the pause which seemed to have been made for him to nod, and Chadron went on.

“We figger that if a dozen or two of ’em’s cleaned out, quick and mysterious, the rest’ll tuck tail and sneak. It’s happened that way in other places more 6 than once, as you and I know. Well, you’re the man that don’t have to take lessons.”

“Money talks,” repeated Mark, still looking into the chimney.

“There’s about twenty of them that counts, the rest’s the kind you can drive over a cliff with a whip. These fellers has strung their cussed bob-wire fences crisscross and checkerboard all around there up the river, and they’re gittin’ to be right troublesome. Of course they’re only a speck up there yet, but they’ll multiply like fleas on a hot dog if we let ’em go ahead. You know how it is.”

There was a conclusiveness in Chadron’s tone as he said that. It spoke of a large understanding between men of a kind.

“Sure,” grunted the man Mark, nodding his head at the chimney. “You want a man to work from the willers, without