“’Course I was joking about shooting you up from the mesquite, Dave,” he explained as the horses climbed the trail from the park.  “I ain’t got a thing against you—­nothing a-tall.  Besides, I’m a law-abiding citizen.  I don’t hold with this here gunman business.  I never was a killer, and I don’t aim to begin now.”

“Sure, I know how tender-hearted you are, Chet.  I’m that way, too.  I’m awful sorry for myself when I get in trouble.  That’s why I tapped you on the cocoanut with the end of my quirt.  That’s why I’d let you have about three bullets from old Tried and True here right in the back if you tried to make your getaway.  But, as you say, I haven’t a thing against you.  I’ll promise you one of the nicest funerals Washington County ever had.”

The little man laughed feebly.  “You will have your joke, Dave, but I know mighty well you wouldn’t shoot me.  You got no legal right to detain me.”

“I’d have to wrastle that out with the coroner afterward, I expect,” replied Dingwell casually.  “Not thinking of leaving me, are you?”

“Oh, no!  No.  Not at all.  I was just kinder talking.”

It was seven miles from Lonesome Park to Battle Butte.  Fox kept up a kind of ingratiating whine whenever the road was so rough that the horses had to fall into a walk.  He was not sure whether when it came to the pinch he could summon nerve to try a bolt, but he laid himself out to establish friendly relations.  Dingwell, reading him like a primer, cocked a merry eye at the man and grinned.

About a mile from Battle Butte they caught up with another rider, a young woman of perhaps twenty.  The dark, handsome face that turned to see who was coming would have been a very attractive one except for its look of sulky rebellion.  From the mop of black hair tendrils had escaped and brushed the wet cheeks flushed by the sting of the rain.  The girl rode splendidly.  Even the slicker that she wore could not disguise the flat back and the erect carriage of the slender body.

Dingwell lifted his hat.  “Good-evenin’, Miss Rutherford.”

She nodded curtly.  Her intelligent eyes passed from his to those of Fox.  A question and an answer, neither of them in words, flashed forth and back between Beulah Rutherford and the little man.

Dave took a hand in the line-up as they fell into place beside each other.  “Hold on, Fox.  You keep to the left of the road.  I’ll ride next you with Miss Rutherford on my right.”  He explained to the girl with genial mockery his reason.  “Chet and I are such tillicums we hate to let any one get between us.”

Bluntly the girl spoke out, “What’s the matter?”

The cattleman lifted his eyebrows in amused surprise.  “Why, nothing at all, I reckon.  There’s nothing the matter, is there, Chet?”

“I’ve got an engagement to meet your father and he won’t let me go,” blurted out Fox.