Brazos Keene and his faithful Laigs had been dead to the world for many hours. They were rudely awakened and hauled out of their bunks.

  “Wot you hombres up to?” Brazos bawled, furiously. They promptly roped him and carried him out like a lassoed bull.

  “Boss, wot ya gonna do?”

  “Brazos, you forget the party tonight.”

  “No I didn’t neither,” he protested. “Me and Laigs come home early last night.”

  “Wal, you’re too shaky to suit this vigilante ootfit…. Pile him in, boys.”

  “——— ——— ———!” roared Brazos, “I’ll kill somebody fer this.”

  Laigs Mason was more complaisant.

  “Wasser masser?” he asked, stupidly, leering around at his captors. “Wash Brazos raisin’—hell aboot?”

  “Laigs, come oot. We’re takin’ you on a little hay-wagon ride.”

  “Dawg-gone!” babbled Laigs, staggering between Britt and Frayne. “Shore nice of—you fellars…. Brazos, no cowboys ever hed sich frens.”

  “Haw! Haw!” yelled Brazos, fiendishly. “Laigs Mason, you’ll wake up pronto…. All yore fault. Didn’t I want to come home?—Jest one more little drink!”

  “Rustle Cherry,” ordered Britt, climbing up on the seat beside the driver. “Down over thet stony flat to the creek…. Drive like hell…. Frayne, you boys keep ’em in the wagon.”

  Cherokee drove the wagon at a gallop over ground covered with loose boulders. If cowboys hated anything it was to be jolted. They were bumped and tossed about. When one of them tried to jump or fall out he was promptly thrown back by Frayne and his allies. That ride down to the creek was hard enough even for the sober cowboys who could hold on. Cherry drove down upon a gravel bar to the edge of a green clear pool about three feet deep.

  “Brazos first,” yelled Britt.

  They dragged the flaxen-haired cowboy out of the wagon and threw him in. Brazos went under, and then bounded up with incredible speed.

  “Aggh!” he bellowed. And the shock was so great that upon plunging back he went under again. Floundering and rolling he got up to wade out, like a drenched shivering dog, and as sober as he had ever been in his life.

  “Come mon, Laigs. Take yore medicine,” he shouted, bouncing around on the bar.

  When they rolled Laigs out upon the gravel he sat up with his solemn blinking eyes beginning to show some intelligence.

  “Wash thish, boys?”

  “Grab hold and swing,” called Frayne. Britt and Santone and Skylark also laid hold of the cowboy, one to each arm and leg, and they swung him, once, twice, three times, then let go. Laigs was small and light. He went far, and fell with a tremendous splash. And when he came up like a spouting porpoise his breathless yell was echoed by the ruthless captors. That water must have been as cold as ice-water. Laigs made terrific haste to plunge out. When he got ashore he was sober, and madder than a wet hen.

  “I’m g-gonna cut out s-somebody’s gizzard,” he shivered. He presented such a ridiculous figure that the cowboys yelled in glee.

  “Take those guns,” called Frayne, as they dragged out the limp Bluegrass.

  “Frayne, how’s Blue goin’ to take this?” queried Britt, dubiously. “He’s from Kentucky, you know!”

  “He’ll take it wet,” declared Frayne, with grim humor. “In with him, boys.”

  Bluegrass went in like a sack of lead and sank likewise. As he did not immediately burst up with a great splash Britt yelled frantically for Brazos and Laigs to drag him out.

  “S-say, I—I wouldn’t wade in thet water even fer you, boss,” declared the Texan, laboriously climbing into the wagon.

  “Laigs! Pull Blue oot! Rustle!”

  Whereupon the obliging Mason plunged in and rescued Bluegrass, pulling him out on the bar, where he presented alarming symptoms of unconsciousness.

  “He’s all right,” declared Frayne. “I’ll look after him. He’s coming to now. Throw the rest of them in!”

  Splash! Splash! Splash! went the remaining cowboys in succession; and with their bawls of shocked sensibilities and the infernal glee of Skylark and his helpers, they made the welkin ring.

  Britt forgot to keep track of Brazos and Laigs. But in a moment more they made their presence known. Brazos lashed the horses and drove them at break-neck speed off the bar and up the slow slope.

  “Wait fer us, boss,” yelled Brazos, from the wagon-seat. “We’re gonna come back with another load.”

  “Stop!” replied Britt, in stentorian tones.

  “Go to hell, Cappy, you an’ your baptizers,” shouted Laigs, gleefully. “We’ll be back.”

  “Wal, Brazos turned the tables on us. We’ll have to walk,” declared Britt.

  “I’ll bet he’ll come,” said Frayne. “We’ll have to wait till Blue recovers.”

  “Aw, Brazos will be heah pronto. Didn’t you see thet devil in his eye? He’s shore up to suthin’.”

  It developed that Bluegrass must have opened his mouth under water and had almost strangled. Frayne rolled him on his face, pounded and pumped his body, until signs of life returned. His pale features took on a shade of red, and he opened his eyes to stare at the faces bent over him.

  “There, you’re all right now, Blue,” spoke up Britt, with relief. “Air you sober?”

  “I reckon…. Who thought I needed a bath?”

  “We all did. Brazos an’ Laigs got theirs fust. Look at Trin, an’ the rest of yore pards.”

  But Blue did not laugh. He sat up shivering. “Whose idee was this?”

  “Mine,” rejoined Britt, fearing the reaction of this hot-blooded Kentuckian.

  “He’s a liar, Blue,” spoke up Frayne, with a laugh. “It was my idee. I’ve seen it worked before…. You forgot we were all to be sober for Miss Ripple’s fiesta tonight. I was afraid some of you boys wouldn’t be. So we ducked you.”

  “Frayne, I’m holdin’ you responsible.”

  “Sure. But don’t be a damn fool, Blue,” returned the outlaw, easily. “Take a joke when it’s on you.”

  “Joke hell! I’m froze. I’m a bag of ice-bones. I’ll catch numonia an’ die.”

  “All you need is a rub-down and a sleep. Then you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m gonna call you out for this,” said Bluegrass, doggedly.

  Britt silenced the cowboys who were about to remonstrate with Blue. He divined that Frayne was equal to the occasion.

  “Blue, that’d be a poor return for the favor I’ve done you.”

  “Favor!—Jest what favor, Mister?”

  “Why, sobering you up. And saving your good name with Miss Ripple. If you get sore I’ll have to shoot your arm off—or worse if you get ugly. That would put Miss Ripple against me. I was only working for her, for your good, and for all of us.”

  “I don’t care a damn,” yelled Blue, now red in the face. But he did care. “You gotta show me you can beat me to a gun.”

  “Blue, we took yore guns off an’ you bet we’ll keep them,” interposed Britt. “Swaller yore medicine, boy.”

  “Did you duck Brazos?”

  “Wal, I should smile we did.”

  “An’ how’d he take it?”

  “Yelled murder. But he stole the wagon, an’ drove off, leavin’ us heah to shank it back.”

  Bluegrass gazed from his partner Trinidad to the other shivering cowboys, and his face began to work.

  “Dog-gone-it! Do I look like them?”

  “Wuss. You lay in the mud. An’ you better let me wipe it off.”

  “All right…. Frayne, I lay down. But I’ll play some orful trick on you, by thunder!”

  “You’re welcome, Blue,” replied Frayne, heartily. “I knew you were a good fellow…. Boys, you all want to take this to heart. If we don’t pull together as an outfit, like brothers, like men with their backs to the wall, Miss Ripple will be robbed poor. And we’ll be disgraced in our own eyes forever.”

  Skylark called from the bank: “Brazos’ drivin’ back, hellbent fer election.”

  The cowboys, except Frayne and Blue, trooped behind Britt up the slope, all voicing anticipation. Sure enough there came the bouncing wagon behind galloping horses and leaving a cloud of dust.

  “Wonder who thet son-of-a-gun has got?” demanded Britt, with vast curiosity.

  “I’ll bet ten bucks I know.”

  “Gee, look at thet wagon!”

  “Boys, you can gamble Brazos would figger up suthin’ great.”

  “Thet hombre always laughs last.”

  To Britt’s amaze the horses did not fall and the wagon did not break to pieces. Brazos, whooping, his face like that of a red imp, drove down and slowing the team, brought them with a fine flourish to a halt on the wide bar. He leaped out. His audience was not slow in reaching the tail-end of that wagon. Britt saw Laigs Mason astride a man dressed in black. There was another man in the wagon. Brazos laid hold of his heels and hauled him out to drop him on the sand, like a sack of potatoes. This personage was Lee Taylor, whose visage attested to a debauch.

  “Heah yu air,” sang out Brazos, and with a remarkable exhibition of strength he lifted Taylor aloft, above his head, and giving vent to an Indian yell, threw him into the pool. Whatever the Southerner’s condition on the moment of hitting the water, it was certain that when he lunged up in a great splash and floundered ashore he was not under the influence of anything but exceedingly cold water.

  Blue of visage, shaking as one with the ague, drenched and dishevelled, Taylor fronted Britt.

  “S-so this is h-h-how you let your ruffianly cowboys treat a gentleman?”

  “Only fun, Taylor. An’ at thet you needed it,” replied Britt, dryly.

  “Say, who’s a ruffian an’ who’s a gentleman?” queried Brazos, menacingly. The diabolical fun in him suffered a blight. Britt quietly pushed Taylor back to the rear.

  “Let him up, Laigs,” shouted Brazos.

  Britt wheeled in time to see the gambler, Malcolm Lascelles, arise clumsily from the floor of the wagon. His frock-coat and flowered vest were spoiled by contact with dust. His wide, flat-crowned sombrero was not in evidence. His handsome face was streaked with dirt and distorted by rage.

  “Step oot, Mister Lascelles,” invited Brazos, sarcastically.

  Lascelles jumped down, his action proving that his equilibrium was not perfect.

  “Britt, what’s the meaning of this outrage?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know, Lascelles. We treated Brazos an’ Mason to a duckin’. They stole the wagon an’ drove away. Why you’re heah I don’t savvy, but it wasn’t from order of mine.”

  “Damnable outrage!” fumed Lascelles. “These drunken louts of yours ——”

  “Take care, Lascelles,” interrupted Britt. “I warn you.”

  “But this range is free. A man has a right to his liberty.”

  “Shore. But there’s no law heah. An’ if a man doesn’t measure up to what the frontier expects, he’s liable to lose not only freedom, but life.”

  “You’re one with your crew,” snarled Lascelles, malignantly. “I am Miss Ripple’s guest—an old friend—and you dare insult me.”

  Brazos stepped up. “Boss, I reckon this is my deal,” he interposed, coolly.

  “It shore is, Brazos. But you’re sober now. Use your haid.”

  Laigs Mason edged his ludicrous little misshapen form in beside Brazos. His homely face expressed an untamed and unabatable fidelity to his partner.

  “Don’t weaken, Brazos. This caird-sharp stinks of rum.”

  “Shet up. Lemme do the talkin’ heah,” snapped Brazos, and then he fastened those piercing half slits of eyes on the gambler.

  “Lascelles, my idee was to duck yu along with yore southern gent friend,” said Brazos. “Reckon I don’t often explain my actions toward any hombre who makes me sore. But I’m tellin’ yu. Miss Holly ast us to be sober today. Thet’s why Frayne an’ Britt hashed up this duckin’ idee. Wal, it is a plumb good one—an’ I’ll be ——— ——— if I’m gonna let her see yu at her party drunk ——”

  “I’m not drunk,” protested Lascelles.

  “Aw, you’re a liar. Yu been drunk fer a week. Right now as Laigs heah swears, yu stink of rum. An’ my idee was to give yu a cold bath. Gonna take yore medicine?”

  “No, you heathen rowdy. Don’t you dare lay another hand on me.”

  “Ah-huh…. Wal, my idee grows a little,” returned Brazos, with a cool insolence that Britt had learned to gauge. “I jest happened to remember how yu fleeced Laigs oot of half a month’s wages.”

  “I did not. My game is square,” declared Lascelles, stoutly, though he paled slightly. No doubt he had been long enough on the frontier to find out what was meted out to crooked gamblers.

  “How aboot it, Laigs?”

  “Pard, I couldn’t swear I seen him, ’cause my eyes was pore,” admitted Mason, frankly. “But Sky seen him hold oot on me, an’ Ride-’Em seen him, too.”

  “Boys, is thet so?”

  “Yes, it’s so,” declared Skylark, curtly.

  The little negro rolled his big eyes till the whites showed. He was reluctant. He remembered the southern attitude toward his race. But he was also loyal.

  “Brazos, jest how slick Mistah Lascelles is I dunno. But I sho seen him pull tricks thet Laigs hisself can pull when he’s sober.”

  “Lascelles, now what?”

  “You’re a Texan. Can you believe a nigger against a white man?”

  “Yu bet yore life—when I know the nigger. Jackson isn’t a liar. Cowboys don’t lie—when they’re in earnest.”

  “You’re as low-down as they are,” retorted Lascelles, yielding to a passion that perhaps did not rightly interpret the cowboy’s coolness. “That’s the last straw, you take a nigger’s word to mine. I’ll shoot him. And I’ll recommend to Miss Ripple that she discharge you.”

  “Fine. You’ll get a long way, ’specially with thet first bluff,” rang out Brazos. Then with incredible rapidity he launched a terrific blow upon Lascelles. Following a sharp, solid crack the gambler fell backward to measure his length in the pool. All save his head went under. In contrast to the others who had been immersed in that icy current, his motions were slow and deliberate. When he strode ashore, his right hand inside his coat, all the cowboys except Laigs sheered to either side of Brazos. Britt himself leaped instinctively out of line. All saw Lascelles’ white supple hand close round something which could only be a gun. Gamblers seldom packed a gun on their hips, but they always had one, or a derringer, up their sleeves, or inside the coat, concealed but easy to draw. And there stood Brazos and Laigs, unarmed.

  “Look oot!” warned Britt, reaching for his weapon, which he had left on the table in the bunk-house. The moment was terrible. Out of a clear sky the thunderbolt!

  “Lascelles, don’t draw!”

  Even the maddened gambler stiffened at Frayne’s voice. Britt suddenly relaxed with a strong revulsion of feeling, and the sweat broke out all over his cold skin. And he knew what to expect before he turned. Frayne leaned back against the wagon with a gun levelled low.

  “Let go…. Come out.”

  Lascelles’ hand dropped limply from under his coat, and with a repulsive face, dirty gray and livid white, he stepped out of the water.

  “Hawses comin’,” shouted Brazos.

  In the soft sand of the bank a group of horsemen had drawn close without being heard by the tense spectators or participants in that drama.

  “Russ Slaughter!” added Bluegrass, trenchantly.

  Britt swept his gaze away from Frayne and Lascelles. At least ten or more riders were heading down under the cottonwoods, with a swarthy leader in front. Several more horsemen hung back on the bank with a string of pack-mules. Slaughter at the head of his followers walked his horse leisurely down on the bar, far enough to take in the situation. Then as Frayne stepped out from the wagon Slaughter halted so sharply that his companions’ horses collided with him. Like so many range-riders Slaughter had the visage of a beast of prey. It would have been impossible to determine his motive, but to be on the safe side Britt gauged him as an enemy. Frayne could be trusted to read this man the same way.

  “’Scuse us fer ridin’ in on you,” drawled Slaughter. “We seen the wagon as we wus crossin’ above … Howdy, Blue…. Wal, there’s my ole nigger cowboy, Jackson…. An’ Trinidad too, wet as a drowned rat…. I take you, sir, to be Britt, foreman of the Ripple outfit.”

  “Yes, I’m Britt, but you’ll excuse me fer the minnit.”

  “Who are you, rider?” queried Frayne.

  “I reckoned everybody had heerd of Russ Slaughter, an’ would shore know him on sight.”

  “Never heard of you,” returned Frayne, curtly. “Would you mind shutting your jaw until I get through with this card-sharp?”

  “Wal, it’s none of my bizness, but I don’t like your talk…. I reckon you’re this coal hand, Frayne, huh?”

  “If you don’t like my talk—lump it,” deliberately rejoined Frayne, with the nerve of a man who had no fear.

  “Yeah?” returned Slaughter, insolently. His oscillating red eyes had swiftly grasped the general absence of guns in that group, except in Frayne’s case.

  “Lascelles, you’re played out here at Don Carlos’ Rancho,” said Frayne. “If your card-sharp tricks weren’t enough, your gall in taking advantage of the Ripple hospitality and using it to press your absurd suit upon Miss Holly, would be. Send for your pack and get out. That’s all.”

  “An’ see heah, Lascelles,” added Brazos, passionately. “Yu seen I hadn’t a gun. Yu’d shot me but fer Frayne…. Wal, ——— ——— yore cheap soul, go fer thet gun next time we meet.”

  “Lascelles, thet’s clear enough,” interposed Britt, forcefully, wanting to lend his authority to this expulsion. “I advise you to leave pronto.”

  Lascelles flung his hands with a gesture of hopeless rage and impotent defeat. Then he started to stalk off, his back to Frayne, who still held that ominous gun forward.

  “Hold on,” called Slaughter. Then he addressed Frayne and Britt. “If you’re through, I reckon you’ve no objection to my talkin’ to this Lascelles?”