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Updated: May 7, 2025
Dan Brayley he thinks he kin raise mellings, but the ol' fool ain't got a circumstance to this. Ain't they beauties?" "It seems to me," observed Patsy, gravely, "that Brayley's are just as good. We passed his place this morning and wondered how he could raise such enormous melons." "'Normous! Brayley's!" "I'm sure they are finer than these," said Beth. "Well, I'll be jiggered!"
He felt no particular resentment toward Brayley. The man had treated him fairly enough since that first night in the bunk-house. He looked upon the matter calmly, almost impersonally, as a duty to which he must attend. And he was not going to wait for an excuse. An opportunity would do.
And as he laughed he stepped forward, lifting his fists. Conniston swung at him with his left hand. The blow whizzed by Brayley's ear, for he had foreseen it and had ducked. But as he retaliated with a crushing blow, Conniston sprang to the side, ducking. Now it was Brayley again who rushed, a leaping light of hope of victory, surety of victory, in his eyes.
If you do nothing beyond making a friend of that man your exile in this Western country of ours will have been worth while. But you will do something more. I did not ask you to come to me just to hear what you had to say about your trouble with Brayley. He told me before you came told me that you had licked him, as you both put it, and that it served him right!
Then they found a bottle of liniment and applied it to their various cuts with a bit of rag. Brayley, his big fingers unbelievably gentle, bandaged Conniston's lame hand for him. And then they went back to the corrals. "You can go out to the east end an' give Rawhide a hand," said Brayley, as he swung up to his horse's back.
Still they said nothing to each other, each man knowing without words that what had passed between them was passed until some new incident should arise to settle matters for them. Brayley, being quick of eye, saw that Conniston had adopted at least one of the customs of the range, and that he carried a revolver at his belt. The third day was Friday. Conniston determined to work Saturday.
"Well, Cookie, what's eatin' you? Ain't you got nothin' to do but stand an' gawk? By the Lord, if you ain't I know where we can git a hash-slinger as is worth his grub!" Cookie's bulging eyes ranged from one face to the other. Then he turned back to his stove and began to wash over again a pan which he had laid aside already as clean. Conniston and Brayley washed with cold water in silence.
His foot was upon the first step of the long stairway which he must climb. He had whipped Brayley in a fair, square, hand-to-hand, man-to-man fight. He had done it through sheer dogged determination that he would do it. He had set himself a task, the hardest task he had ever essayed. And success had come to him as self-vindication.
And then he gripped Conniston's hand warmly, gave him an address in Denver where a telegram would find him, and drove away toward Crawfordsville, promising to telephone to Brayley to report to the Valley immediately. Before he was out of sight the new superintendent called his four overseers aside. "What wages are you fellows drawing down?" he asked, bluntly. "Three bones," the Lark told him.
Patsy was overjoyed at the success of her plot, which she had conceived on the spur of the moment, as most clever plots are conceived. On the way home she confided to her cousins a method of securing revenge upon the agent for selling them the three copies of the "Lives of the Saints." "McNutt wants to get even with Brayley, he says, and we want to get even with McNutt.
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