he ought to keep awake, for he sat on the veranda and blinked at the humans. Injun gazed at him stolidly.

"Huh!" he grunted. "Sittin' Bull."

"Great!" cried all the others.

This matter settled, the men went away. Sitting Bull stretched himself out on the veranda and again fell asleep, and Whitey told Injun that the dog's coming probably was a good omen. That there ought to be something doing on the ranch now.

CHAPTER II

A Suprise

It was early morning, and the Bar O Ranch slept, heedless of the keen late-autumn air that had in it just a faint, brisk hint of the fall frosts to come. Whitey came out of the ranch house and moved toward the stable. Sitting Bull trudged after him.

The dog was entirely rested, having slept the better part of two days and nights. He seemed to know that Whitey was his new owner. Dogs have an instinct for that sort of thing. And though Bull was civil and friendly enough with every one else on the ranch, he took to Whitey by selection.

At six o'clock each night Bull sat near the ranch-house front door as though waiting for some one. He waited a long time. Bill Jordan, who prided himself on what he knew about dogs, and men, said that Bull's former owner probably was a city man, and was in the habit of coming home at six; that the dog was waiting for him to appear. Be that as it may, in the days to come Bull gave up this custom. No one knew what he felt about the loss of his old master. He became a Montana dog. The city was to know him no more.

Now he waddled along after Whitey, who was making for a straw stack, near the stable. Among the field mice, gophers, rabbits, and such that thought this stack was a pretty nice place to hang around, were two hens that were of the same opinion. At least they made their nests in the stack and laid their eggs there. And they were the only hens that the Bar O boasted, for hens were scarce in Montana in those days—as Buck said, "almost as scarce as hen's teeth, an' every one knows there ain't no such thing."

It was Whitey's particular business to gather the eggs of those hens, which they saw fit to lay early in the morning. So Whitey came to the stack early, to be ahead of any weasels or ferrets, who had an uncommon fondness for eggs. This morning as he moved around the stack he didn't find any eggs, but he saw something black and pointed sticking out of the straw. Whitey took hold of the object and pulled, and the thing lengthened out in his hands.

And right there a sort of shivery feeling attacked Whitey's spine and moved up until it reached his hair, which straightway began to stand on end, for the object was a boot and in it was a man's leg. The boot came, followed by the leg, followed by a man. From what might be called the twin straw beds, another man emerged. Both sat upright in the straw and rubbed their eyes. Whitey didn't wait to see if any more were coming, or even to think of where he was going. He fled.

Instinct took him toward the ranch house, and good fortune brought Bill Jordan out of the door at the same moment.

"Bill!" yelled Whitey, "there's two men in the straw stack!"

Bill did not appear unduly excited. "They ain't eatin' the straw, are they?" he inquired.

"No, but they look awfully tough, and they nearly gave me heart-disease," Whitey panted.

"If tough-lookin' folks could give me heart-disease, I'd of bin dead long ago," Bill responded. "Let's go an' size 'em up."

Bill strolled to the stack with Whitey. The two men, now thoroughly awake, were still sitting upright in the straw. In front of them stood Sitting Bull. His lower jaw was sticking out farther than usual, and he was watching the men and awaiting events.

In Front of Them Stood Sitting Bull

"Hey! Call off yer dog, will ye?" requested one of the men.

"He ain't mine," Bill answered calmly, indicating Whitey. "He's his."

"Well, get him to call him off," said the man. "Every time we move he makes a noise like sudden death."

Whitey summoned Bull, who came to him obediently enough, and the men rose to their feet, and stretched themselves and brushed off some of the straw that clung to their not over-neat attire. They were not as bad-looking as they might have been, neither were they as good-looking. One was tall and slim and wore a dark beard. The other was almost as tall, but, being very fat, did not look his height. He was clean-shaven, or would have been had it not been for about three days' stubbly growth. Their clothes were well-worn, and they wore no collars, but their boots were good.

"What you fellers doin' here?" demanded Bill. "Ain't the bunk house good enough for you?"

"We got in late, an' ev'body was in bed," said the taller of the two. "We're walkin' through for th' thrashin'."

"Well, yer late for that too," said Bill.

The threshing in the early days of Montana was an affair in which many people of all sorts took part, as will be seen later. Bill questioned the men, and their story was brought out. It seemed that they had come from Billings, in search of work at threshing. The taller, thin one was named Hank, but was usually called "String Beans," on account of his scissors-like appearance. He had formerly been a cowpuncher. The other had been a waiter, until he got too fat, then he had become a cook. Originally named Albert, after he had waited in a restaurant for a while he had been dubbed "Ham And," which, you may know, is a short way of ordering ham and eggs. And this name in time was reduced to "Ham."

Bill Jordan did not seem to take the men seriously. Their names may have had something to do with his attitude, and the early West was not over-suspicious, anyway. It had been said that "out here we take every man to be honest, until he is proven to be a thief, and in the East they take every man to be a thief, until he is proven to be honest." You can believe that or not, as you happen to live in the West or in the East. Besides, Bill could make use of the talents of String Beans and Ham. He needed "hands" to work on the ranch.

When Whitey found that his supposed tragedy was turning into a comedy, he felt rather bad about it, especially as Bill was inclined to guy him.

"Lucky you didn't shoot up them two fellers what's named after food," Bill said, when the strangers had retired to the bunk house. "Or knock 'em out with some of them upper-cuts you're so handy in passin' 'round." For a boy, Whitey was an expert boxer.

"What was I to think, finding them that way?" Whitey retorted. "And they don't look very good to me yet."

"Clothin' is only skin deep," said Bill.

Whitey felt called on to justify his alarm. "It's not only their clothes," he said, "but their looks. You noticed that Bull didn't like them, and you know dogs have true instinct about judging people."

"Let me tell you somethin' about dogs," began Bill, who usually was willing to tell Whitey, or anybody else, something about anything. "Dogs is supposed to be