When Bowles rode back to the Bat Wing Ranch he was a hard-looking citizen. His aunt, the hypothetical Mrs. Earl-Bowles, would scarcely have recognized him; Mrs. Lee started visibly at sight of his battered face; and Dixie smiled knowingly as she glanced at his half-closed eye.

"Aha, Mr. Man," she said, "it looks like you'd been into a juniper, too!"

"Well, something like that," acknowledged Bowles, gazing lover-like into her eyes; and from that he led the conversation into other channels, less intimately associated with common brawls. For though Bowles had given way to his evil passions and had even gone so far as to call for his gun in order to beard his rival, he did not wish it known to his lady. As he contemplated her grace in a plain white dress, and the witchery of her faintest smile, it seemed indeed a profanation of the sacred Temple of Love to so much as allude to a fight. Undoubtedly in the wooings of the stone age the males had competed with clubs, but certainly for no woman like this. Love, as Bowles had learned it from the poets, was above such sordid scenes; and as he had learned it from her—when she had chastened his soul with a kiss—ah, now he could sing with old Ben Jonson and the deathless Greeks:

Here was the shrine at which he worshiped, and he wished no carnal thought to enter in. So he spoke to her softly and went his way, lest some one should read his heart and break the spell with jeering.

The dust of a day's hard driving was on his face; there was a red weal over one eye and a bruise on his bearded cheek, but he was a lover still. Dixie knew it by his eyes, that glowed and kindled; by his voice, whose every word veiled a hidden caress; and she greeted the others coldly from thinking of this one who had come. Then she dissembled and went down among them, but her ways were changed and she only smiled at their jests.

"Hey, Dix," challenged Hardy Atkins at last, thrusting a grimy hand down into his shap pocket, "look what I got fer ye!"

He drew out a money-order ring that he had won in a mountain poker game, and flashed the stone in the sun.

"It's a genuwine, eighteen-carat diamond," he announced. "Come over hyer and let's see which finger it fits. If it fits yore third finger, you know——"

"Well, I like your nerve," observed Dixie Lee, smiling tolerantly with Gloomy Gus. "'Come over hyer!' eh? It's a wonder you wouldn't come over here—but I don't want your old ring, so don't come."

"W'y, what's the matter?" inquired Hardy Atkins, who loved to do his courting in public. "You ain't goin' back on me, are you, Dix?"

"Well, if I went very far back on your trail," answered Dixie, "I reckon I'd find where you got that ring. What's the matter? Wouldn't she have it? Or did that other girl give it back?"

She turned away with a curl on her lips, and when he saw that she meant it, Hardy Atkins was filled with chagrin. From a man now, that would be a good joke; but from Dixie—well, somebody must have blabbed! He turned a darkly inquiring eye upon Bowles, and looked no farther; but Henry Lee had spoken, and all that rough work was barred. Still there were ways and ways, and after thinking over all the dubious tricks of the cow camp he called in his faithful friends and they went into executive session.

"Now, hyer," expounded the ex-twister, as they got together over the butchering of a beef, "the way to bump that Hinglishman off is to make a monkey of 'im—skeer 'im up and laugh 'im out o' camp. He's so stuck on himse'f he cain't stand to be showed up—what's the matter with a fake killin'? Here's lots of blood."

He cupped up a handful of blood from the viscera of the newly killed beef, and his side partners chuckled at the thought.

"Let me do the shootin', and I'll throw in with ye," rumbled Buck Buchanan.

"I'll hold the door on 'im," volunteered Poker Bill.

"Well, who's goin' to play dead?" grinned Happy Jack. "Me? All right. Git some flour to put on my face, and watch me make the fall—I done that once back on the Pecos."

So they laid their plans, very mysteriously, and when the big poker game began that night there was no one else in on the plot. Buck had the pistol he had killed the beef with tucked away in the slack of his belt; Jack had changed to a light shirt, the better to show the blood; and Hardy Atkins was a make-up man, with bottled blood and a pinch of flour in his pockets to use when the lights went out.

The game was straight draw poker, and the prize a private horse. Ten dollars apiece was the price of a chance, and it was freeze-out at four-bits a chip. That served to draw the whole crowd, and as the contest narrowed down to Buck Buchanan and Happy Jack, the table was lined three deep.

"How many?" asked Buck, picking up the deck.

"Gimme one!" said Jack, and when he got it he looked grave and turned down his hand, the way all good poker players do when they have tried to fill a flush and failed.

"I bet ye ten!" challenged Jack.

"Go you—and ten more!" came back Buck.

"Raise ye twenty!"

"What ye got?" demanded Buck, shoving his beans to the center, and then, with a sudden roar, he leaped up and seized the stakes. "Keep yore hands off that discyard!" he bellowed, hammering furiously on the table. "You lie, you——"

Whack! came Happy Jack's hand across his face, and Buchanan grabbed for his gun. Then, as the crowd scattered wildly, he thrust out his pistol and shot a great flash of powder between Happy Jack's arm and his ribs.

"Uh!" grunted Jack, and went over backward, chair and all.

Then Hardy Atkins blew out the lamp, and the riot went on in the dark. Bowles was only one of ten frantic punchers who struggled to get out the door; Brigham Clark was one of as many more who burrowed beneath the beds; and when Hardy Atkins lit the lamp and threw the dim light on Happy Jack's wan face he was just in time to save his audience. True, the older punchers had been in fake fights before; but they had been in real ones, too—where the bullets flew wide of the mark—and this had seemed mighty real. In fact, if one were to criticize such a finished production, it was a little too real for the purpose, for the conduct of Bowles was in no wise different from the rest. There had been a little too much secrecy and not quite enough team-work about the play, but Poker-face Bill was still at his post and the victim was caught in the crowd.

"Oh, my Gawd!" moaned Hardy Atkins, kneeling down and tearing aside Jack's coat. "Are you hurt bad, Jack?"

The red splotch on his shirt gave the answer, and the room was silent as death. Then Poker Bill began to whisper and push; delighted grins were passed and stilled; and, moving in a mass, with Bowles up near the front, the crowd closed in on the corpse.

"He's dead!" rumbled Buck Buchanan, making a fierce gesture with his pistol. "I don't make no mistakes. You boys saw him cheat," he went on, approaching nearer to the crowd. "And he slapped me first! You saw that, didn't you, Bowles?"

"Oh, hush up!" cried Hardy Atkins, tragically shaking his fallen friend; and then as he worked up to the big scene where Happy Jack was to come to life and run amuck after Bowles, the door was kicked open and gloomy Gus strode in.

"What's the matter with you fellers?" he demanded, his voice trembling with indignation at the thought of his broken sleep, and then, at sight of Jack, he stopped.

"Jack's dead," said Hardy Atkins, trying hard to give Gus the wink; but the cook was staring at the corpse. Perhaps, being roused from a sound sleep, his senses were not quite as acute as usual; perhaps the play-acting was too good; be that as it may, his rage was changed to pity, and, he took the center of the stage.

"Ah, poor Jack!" he quavered, going closer and gazing down upon him. "Shot through the heart. He's dead, boys; they's no use workin' on 'im—I've seen many a man like that before."

"Well, let's try, anyway!" urged Atkins, in a desperate endeavor to get rid of him. "Go git some water, Gus! Haven't you got any whisky?"

"Oh, he's dead," mourned the cook; "they's no use troublin' him—it's all over with poor old Jack. You'll never hear him laugh no more."

A faint twitch came over the set features of the corpse at this, and Hardy Atkins leaped desperately in to shield his face.

"He was a good-hearted boy," continued Gloomy Gus, still intent upon his eulogy—and then Happy Jack broke down. First he began to twitch, then a snort escaped him, and he shook with inextinguishable laughter. A look went around the room, Brigham Clark punched Bowles with his elbow and pulled him back, and then Gus glanced down at the corpse. His peroration ceased right there, and disgust, chagrin, and anger chased themselves across his face like winds across a lake; then, with a wicked oath, he snatched the gun away from Buck and struggled to get it cocked.

"You young limb!" he raved, menacing Happy Jack with the pistol and fighting to break clear of Buck. "You'll play a trick on me, will ye—an old man and punched cows before you was born! Let go of that gun, Mr. Buchanan! I'll show the blankety-blank——" And so he raged, while the conspirators labored to soothe him, and Brig dragged Bowles outside.