"I reckon you're right. He sure is generous, even in the whalings he gives. But don't worry about me. I'm all right, and much obliged for your kindness in asking."
Steve found his cigar and retired. He carried with him in memory a picture of a troubled young creature with soft, tender eyes gleaming starlike from beneath waves of dark hair.
Yeager met Harrison swaggering up the gravel walk toward the house. A malevolent gleam lit in the cold black eyes of the bully.
"How you feeling, young fella?"
"A hundred and eighty years old," answered the cowpuncher promptly with a grin. "Every time I open my mouth my face cracks. You ce'tainly did give me a proper trimming. I don't know sic-'em about this scientific fight game."
Harrison scowled. "There's more at the same address any time you need it."
"Not if I see you coming in time to make a getaway," retorted Steve with a laugh.
As the range-rider passed lightly down the walk there drifted back to the prizefighter the words of a cowboy song:—
"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,
In a narrow grave just six by three,
Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me—
Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee."
Harrison ripped out an oath. There was a note of gentle irony about the minor strain of the song that he resented. He had given this youth the thrashing of his life, but he had apparently left his spirit quite uncrushed. What he liked was to have men walk in fear of him.