the two lads who had lived so long in the east deferred to the
boy of the west in this matter, thinking, naturally, that he
would better be able to handle it.

"Looking for a place?" asked Bud, genially enough, as he surveyed
the newcomer, from the top of his broad-brimmed range hat to the
pawing hoofs of his black steed, for the horse was impatiently
digging in the dirt.

"Yep!" was the answer. "I'm looking for a place." The voice was
pleasant, and there was none of that clipping off of the final
"g" in his words, so common a practice among most of the cowboys.
Perhaps they didn't have time to use the proper endings. "I'm
dead anxious to ride for some outfit," went on "Four Eyes," as he
had been dubbed and as he came to be called, as long as he
remained with Diamond X Second. "Your father sent me over here,"
he added.

"My father!" exclaimed Bud. "Do you know him? I don't know you!"
he added quickly, for he sensed that the stranger, in some
manner, had managed to pick him from all the others as the son of
the proprietor of Diamond X.

"I don't claim to know your father, only having met him once,
when I rode up, yesterday, to ask for a job," went on Four Eyes.
"I slept out last night--back there," he added with a wave of 'is
quirt in the direction of Diamond X. "Had supper with the boys at
your father's ranch, and he told me you might be needing some
one. If you don't----" He paused suggestively, evidently ready to
ride on and try his luck elsewhere if there was no chance in the