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“Sort of broke,” repeated the boy, eyeing him. “So you want to hold your jobs?”

“If–” began the buccaroo, and halted.

“Fact is, you’re a set of cowards,” said Drake, briefly. “I notice you’ve forgot to remove that whiskey jug.” The demijohn still stood by the great fireplace. Drake entered and laid hold of it, the crowd standing back and watching. He took it out, with what remained in its capacious bottom, set it on a stump, stepped back, levelled his gun, and shattered the vessel to pieces. The whiskey drained down, wetting the stump, creeping to the ground.

Much potency lies in the object-lesson, and a grin was on the faces of all present, save Uncle Pasco’s. It had been his demijohn, and when the shot struck it he blinked nervously.

“You ornery old mink!” said Drake, looking at him. “You keep to the jewelry business hereafter.”

The buccaroos grinned again. It was reassuring to witness wrath turn upon another.

“You want to hold your jobs?” Drake resumed to them. “You can trust yourselves?”

“Yes, sir,” said Half-past Full.

“But I don’t trust you,” stated Drake, genially; and the buccaroos’ hopeful eyes dropped. “I’m going to divide you,” pursued the new superintendent. “Split you far and wide among the company’s ranches. Stir you in with decenter blood. You’ll go to White-horse ranch, just across the line of Nevada,” he said to Half-past Full. “I’m tired of the brothers Drinker. You’ll go–let’s see–“

Drake paused in his apportionment, and a sleigh came swiftly round the turn, the horse loping and lathery.

“What vas dat shooting I hear joost now?” shouted Max Vogel, before he could arrive. He did not wait for any answer. “Thank the good God!” he exclaimed, at seeing the boy Dean Drake unharmed, standing with a gun. And to their amazement he sped past them, never slacking his horse’s lope until he reached the corral. There he tossed the reins to the placid Bolles, and springing out like a surefooted elephant, counted his saddle-horses; for he was a general. Satisfied, he strode back to the crowd by the demijohn. “When dem men get restless,” he explained to Drake at once, “always look out. Somebody might steal a horse.”

The boy closed one gray, confidential eye at his employer. “Just my idea,” said he,” when I counted ’em before breakfast.”

“You liddle r-rascal,” said Max, fondly, “What you shoot at?”

Drake pointed at the demijohn. “It was bigger than those bottles at Nampa,” said he. “Guess you could have hit it yourself.”

Max’s great belly shook. He took in the situation. It had a flavor that he liked. He paused to relish it a little more in silence.

“Und you have killed noding else?” said he, looking at Uncle Pasco, who blinked copiously. “Mine old friend, you never get rich if you change your business so frequent. I tell you that thirty years now.” Max’s hand found Drake’s shoulder, but he addressed Brock. “He is all what you tell me,” said he to the foreman. “He have joodgement.”

Thus the huge, jovial Teuton took command, but found Drake had left little for him to do. The buccaroos were dispersed at Harper’s, at Fort Rinehart, at Alvord Lake, towards Stein’s peak, and at the Island Ranch by Harney Lake. And if you know east Oregon, or the land where Chief E-egante helped out Specimen Jones, his white soldier friend, when the hostile Bannocks were planning his immediate death as a spy, you will know what wide regions separated the buccaroos. Bolles was taken into Max Vogel’s esteem; also was Chinese Sam. But Max sat smoking in the office with his boy superintendent, in particular satisfaction.

“You are a liddle r-rascal,” said he. “Und I r-raise you fifty dollars.”