Well '- Checking the vituperative epithets which began escaping his lips, Buck drew Ilia revolver from it bolster and handed it to one of the men beside him. Repeat it!' he said with ahoarse chuckle, that wns echoed by his two companions. But he puiled him?e!f together in another instant, as Duke Ridge coolly began taking oil' his coat. Buck Cummings, the youngest and mest notorious desperado in western Arkansas, was momentariiy paralysed at the speaker s audacity.

'1 beg your pardon,' remarked Duke, mildly, ? but willycu please step ashore and repeat that remark.' As his friends could have told you, the young college athlete was one whose quick temper and utterly fearless disposition never was known to let an insult pa-.s unnoticed. The speaker, a heavily built young man, wearing a faded red shirt and high boots, into which the legs cf his trousers were tucked, expectorated violently over the rail, as though to show his contempt for the new- comer, who, having turned, was eyeing him eteadily. in summit' ?' A tenderfoot dude-that's what he s, you can bet your sweet life, Jim said a very audible voice. Behind, the house were thick forests, sloping upward till they blended into indistinctness with the cloudy mists that were sweeping downward firm the mount. A shanty boat was drawn up at the rude landing place, and three hard looking sub- jects were stacking on the deck. half struc- ture, built of logs and plabs, standing on the bank of the Arkansaw river, thirty miles from Grey Earth city, Duke's destination. A WESTERN !DYL Duke (short f'r Marmaduke) Ridge pulled ap a dusty broncho in front of 'Ben- and looked about him ruefully.

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