THE FACE IN THE WATCH.
At lunch Carson was strangely silent and abstracted. The raillery of his friends failed to awaken him into anything like liveliness. He smiled a bit at their jokes and chaffing, but any one could see those smiles were forced.
"I should say it was high time you got away from the wild and woolly West!" cried Jack Diamond. "I've heard that loneliness on the ocean or the plains makes a man gloomy, and, by Jove! I believe it's true."
"Cowboys and cattlemen are not gloomy," returned Carson. "As a rule, they're a jovial, good-natured set, who thoroughly enjoy a joke or a bit of humor. It's not loneliness on the plains that affects me, if there's anything the matter with me."
"Anything the matter with you?" rumbled Browning. "Why, in the old days you were always light-hearted. This is the first time I've ever seen a depressed mug on you."
"Let me alone, and I presume I'll come out of it," said the young Westerner. "I'm sorry if I'm casting a shadow on an otherwise happy gathering. I didn't mean to."
"Oh, you're all right, Carson. I should say your liver might be out of kilter. You need something to stir it up."
"If there's anything that will stir up a man's liver more than a hundred-mile jaunt on horseback, I'd like to know what it is. I've been taking plenty such jaunts this spring. Although I haven't been at the ranch for a month, I was there when the snow came off, and rode the range with the rest of the boys to find out how our cows had come through the winter."
"Don't suppose you've been troubled any more by cattle thieves since the demise of that fake Laramie Dave?" questioned Merriwell.
"No, we put an end to the business in our parts. We had you to thank for it. You were the one who discovered how our brand of the B. S. was being turned into the Flying Dollars brand. You stopped cattle stealing in the Big Sandy region."