"Hot work; eh, boys?" asked Mr. Merkel, when Dick, Nort and Bud
rode past to get drinks of water.

"But it's great, all the same!" answered Dick, with shining
eyes--eyes that gleamed amid a face dark with the tan of the
western sun and grimy with the dust of the western plains.

"Glad you like it!" commented the proprietor of Diamond X as he
kept on with his tallying. "How they coming, Slim?" he asked his
foreman.

"Couldn't be better! Old Buck Tooth is doing a heap sight more
than I ever dreamed a Zuni could."

"Bud said that his old Indian helper was up to snuff!" commented
Mr. Merkel. "I'm glad to know it. Heard anything from Double Z?"
he asked, and there was an anxious note in his voice.

"No, Hank and his gang seem to have quieted down after what I
told 'em!"

"Well, I hope he doesn't make trouble for Bud and the boys.
They're going back to Happy Valley to-night." "So I understand.
Oh, shucks! Don't worry about Hank! He's all talk--he and that
blustery foreman of his, Ike Johnson!"

There had been a dispute between the cowboys of Diamond X and
those of Double Z, a ranch owned by the notorious Hank Fisher, a
few days before the round-up, the subject of dispute being the