"Shoot, old-timer!" commanded Courtlandt curtly.
"Well, since you fed Ranlett his time he's been moseyin' round Slippy Bend. The other day when I rode over there to see Baldy Jennings, 'bout shippin' them steer, I just naturally dropped into the Lazy Wolf. Our late manager was settin' at a table with two girls and a man. It wasn't my butt-in and I wouldn't have specially noticed the stranger if he hadn't been makin' goo-goo eyes at one of the females out of all proportion to her good looks. She hed——"
"Let's pass up what she looked like. Who was the man?"
"I didn't know then, but Saturday you brought the ol' son-of-a-gun of a lady-killer to the bunk-house yourself. Savvy?"
"You don't mean Beechy?"
"Sorry, Chief, but he's the same. An' unless I'm locoed Ranlett's got the feller's hide nailed to his stable door; he's got him an' he's got him tight."
CHAPTER XIII
Bubbles the roan, own brother to Patches, and Peggy Glamorgan on his back were radiant youth incarnate. The horse arched his graceful head as though proudly conscious of the loveliness of his burden; the corded muscles of shoulder, flank and leg flexed sensitively under his satin skin with every move of his pliant body. The girl's sombrero had the true ranchero tilt. Her khaki riding costume was as perfect a thing as the cinema-fed imagination of a fashionable habit-maker could conceive; it was only by exercising superhuman restraint that he had refrained from adding buckskin fringe and a six-shooter. Tommy Benson regarded her as though hypnotized. He caught a quizzical expression in Jerry's eyes as she stood on the porch, and colored hotly. He swallowed hard and sprang to the saddle. With obvious effort to regain his poise, he touched his horse with his heels and with a theatrical sweep of his right arm declaimed:
"Let's go! 'Once more into the breach dear friends, once more.'"