"Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!" shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air
with his fists.

"You hear your boss, Bud," said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin--just
as he had said a year ago.

And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the Rancho
Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he had
bought from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager:

"What's the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?"

"X Bar Y," said Wilson.

"I thought so," said Quinn. "But look at that white heifer there;
she's got another brand--a heart with a cross inside of it. What brand
is that?"



II

THE RANSOM OF MACK

Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold
mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say "old" Mack; but he wasn't
old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old.

"Andy," he says to me, "I'm tired of hustling. You and me have been