married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I
don't amount to a knot in a stake rope."

"When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued
Baldy with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much to
say on the ranch as he did."

"I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to
get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as far
from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced
to call Santa the 'cattle queen.' I'm boss of the cattle--that's all.
She 'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can't
sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's the
'queen'; and I'm Mr. Nobody."

"I'd be king if I was you," repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. "When
a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her--on the hoof--
dressed--dried--corned--any old way from the chaparral to the packing-
house. Lots of folks thinks it's funny, Webb, that you don't have the
say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin' none on Miz Yeager--she's
the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas--but
a man ought to be boss of his own camp."

The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded
melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and
guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose
leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But
his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers
forbade the comparison.