With a smile the girl glanced toward the other rider who sat with an air of tolerant amusement.  She recognized him as the man called Tex—­the one who had so deftly dropped his loop over the shoulders of the Mayor, and noted that, in comparison with the other, he presented rather a sorry appearance.  The heels of his boots were slightly run over.  His spurs were of dingy steel and his leather chaps, laced up the sides with rawhide thongs looked as though they had seen much service.  The scarf at his throat, however, was as vivid as his companion’s and something in the flash of the grey eyes that looked into hers from beneath the broad brim of the Stetson caused an inexplicable feeling of discomfort.  Their gaze held a suspicion of veiled mockery, and the clean cut lips twisted at their comers into the semblance of a cynical, smiling sneer.

“I want to thank you, too,” she smiled, “it wasn’t your fault your friend——­”

“Jack Purdy’s my name, mom,” interrupted the other, importantly.

“—­that Mr. Purdy beat you, I am sure.  And are you always as accurate as when you lassoed the honourable Mayor of Wolf River?”

“I always get what I go after—­sometimes,” answered the man meeting her gaze with a flash of the baffling grey eyes.  A subtle something, in look or words, seemed a challenge.  Instinctively she realized that despite his rough exterior here was a man infinitely less crude than the other.  An ordinary cowpuncher, to all appearance, and yet—­something in the flash of the eyes, the downward curve of the corners of the lips aroused the girl’s interest.  He was speaking again: 

“I’ll dance with you, too—­if you stay.  But I won’t mortgage none of your time in advance.”  The man’s glance shifted deliberately from the girl to Endicott and back to the girl again.  Then, without waiting for her to reply, he whirled his horse and swung off at top speed to join the other cowpunchers who were racing in the wake of the Mayor.

CHAPTER III

PURDY

Some moments later, Jack Purdy nosed his horse into the group of cayuses that stood with reins hanging, “tied to the ground,” in front of the Long Horn Saloon.  Beyond the open doors sounded a babel of voices and he could see the men lined two deep before the bar.

Swinging from the saddle he threw the stirrup over the seat and became immediately absorbed in the readjustment of his latigo strap.  Close beside him Tex Benton’s horse dozed with drooping head.  Swiftly a hand whose palm concealed an open jack-knife slipped beneath the Texan’s right stirrup-leather and a moment later was withdrawn as the cayuse, suspicious of the fumbling on the wrong side of the saddle, snorted nervously and sheered sharply against another horse which with an angry squeal, a laying back of the ears, and a vicious snap of the teeth, resented the intrusion.  Purdy jerked sharply at the reins of his own horse which caused that animal to rear back and pull away.