"Excuse me," stammered Bowles, holding resolutely to his task, "I thought perhaps you might want to ride ahead and help her off her horse."
For a moment the boss looked him over, then he grunted and bowed quite formally.
"Yes, thank you, Mr. Bowles," he said. "Will you call Hardy to take my place?"
He waited until Hardy Atkins had started, and then put spurs to his horse, and when the cowboys reached camp he was busy about the tent. The next day Dixie did not ride out on the round-up, and when they came back she was gone. "Back to the home ranch," the cook reported, and he added that she was not very lame; but the cow-punchers glared at Bowles as if he had crippled her for life. And not only that, but as if he had done it on purpose.
"These blankety-blank tenderfeet!" commented Hardy Atkins by the fire. "They can make an outfit more trouble than a bunch of Apache Indians. I cain't stand 'em—it's onlucky to have 'em around."
"I'd rather be short-handed, any time," observed Buck Buchanan sagely.
"Now, there's Dix," continued Hardy, with a vindictive glance at Bowles; "worth any two men in the outfit—ride anywhere—goes out with this tenderfoot and comes within an ace of gittin' killed. She raced with me, rode with Jack and Slim, and left the Straw a mile—the Hinglishman comes in behind her, crowds her outer the trail, and if it hadn't been fer that juniper she'd a-landed in them rocks."
Bowles looked up scornfully from his place and said nothing, but Brigham appeared for the defense.
"Aw, what do you know about it?" he growled. "You wasn't there. Who told you he crowded her out of the trail?"
"Well, he says so himse'f!" protested Atkins, pointing an accusing finger at Bowles. "Didn't he come into camp and tell all about it? I believe that he was tryin' to do it so he could git a chance to——"