Me Smith

out in this country.”
    “That depends a little upon the fellow;” and he turned Molly’s head toward the ranch, with the pony in tow.
    Smith said nothing more, but rode off across the hills with all the evil in his nature showing in his lowering countenance.
    Dora’s eyes were brilliant as they always were under excitement; and when Ralston dismounted she stroked Molly’s nose, saying in a voice which was more natural than it had been for days when addressing him, “It was splendid! She is splendid!” and he glowed, feeling that perhaps he was included a little in her praise.
    “You want to watch out now,” said Susie soberly. “Smith’ll never rest till he’s ‘hunks.’”
    Ralston thought the Schoolmarm hesitated, as if she were waiting for him to join them, or were going to ask him to do so; but she did not, and, although it was some satisfaction to feel that he had drawn first blood, he felt his despondency returning as soon as Dora and Susie had ridden away.
    He walked aimlessly about, waiting for Molly to cool a bit before he let her drink preparatory to starting on his tiresome ride over the range. Both he and the Colonel believed that the thieves would soon grow bolder, and his strongest hope lay in coming upon them at work. He had noted that there were no fresh hides among those which hung on the fence, and he sauntered down to have another look at the old ones. With his foot he turned over something which lay close against a fence-post, half concealed in a sage-brush. Stooping, he unrolled it and shook it out; then he whistled softly. It was a fresh hide with the brand cut out!
    Ralston nodded his head in mingled satisfaction and regret. So the thief was working from the MacDonald ranch! Did the Indian woman know, he wondered. Was it possible that Susie was in ignorance? With all his heart, he hoped she was. He walked leisurely to the house and leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door.
    “Have the makings, Ling?” He passed his tobacco-sack and paper to the cook.
    “Sure!” said Ling jauntily. “I like ’em cigilette.”
    And as they smoked fraternally together, they talked of food and its preparation—subjects from which Ling’s thoughts seldom wandered far. When the advantages of soda and sour milk over baking powder were thoroughly exhausted as a topic, Ralston asked casually:
    “Who killed your last beef, Ling? It’s hard to beat.”
    “Yellow Bird,” he replied. “Him good butcher.”
    “Yes,” Ralston agreed; “I should say that Yellow Bird was an uncommonly good butcher.”
    So, after all, it was the Indians who were killing. Ralston sauntered on to the bunk-house to think it over.
    “Tubbs,” McArthur was saying, as he eyed that person with an interest which he seldom bestowed upon his hireling, “you really have a most remarkable skull.”
    Tubbs, visibly flattered, smirked.
    “It’s claimed that it’s double by people what have tried to work me over. Onct I crawled in a winder and et up a batch of ’son-of-a-gun-in-a-sack’ that the feller who lived there had jest made. He come in upon me suddent, and the way he hammered me over the head with the stove-lifter didn’t trouble him , but,” declared Tubbs proudly, “he never even knocked me to my knees.”
    “It is of the type of dolichocephalic,” mused McArthur.
    “A barber told me that same thing the last time I had a hair-cut,” observed Tubbs blandly. “‘Tubbs,’ says he, ‘you ought to have a massaj every week, and lay the b’ar-ile on a-plenty.’”
    “It is remarkably suggestive of the skulls found in the ancient paraderos of Patagonia. Very similar in contour—very similar.”
    “There’s no Irish in me,” Tubbs declared with a touch of resentment. “I’m pure mungrel—English and Dutch.”
    “It is an extremely curious skull—most peculiar.” He felt of Tubbs’s head with growing interest. “This bump behind the ear, if the system of phrenology has any value, would indicate unusual pugnacity.”
    “That’s where a mule kicked me and put his laig out of joint,” said Tubbs humorously.
    “Ah, that renders the skull pathological; but, even so, it is an interesting skull to an anthropologist—a really valuable skull, it would be to me, illustrating as it does certain features in dispute, for which I have stubbornly contended in controversies with the Preparator of Anthropology at the École des Haute Études in Paris.”
    “Why don’t you sell it to him, Tubbs?”