"Of course I'm glad," he said, his voice a little uncertain. And then, laughing, "You just surprised me out of my senses. Why didn't you write that you were coming?"

"Because I'd rather travel three thousand miles to tell you about it than write a letter. I'm amazingly glad to see you. How's everything? How is the range making out?"

"Fine," Garth answered quickly. "You have come to stay? You will be running the outfit yourself now?"

"Business to-morrow," retorted Wayne lightly. "It is after sundown and business should be asleep."

"And does it wake at sunup?" Garth returned with an attempt at Wayne's bantering mood, although a little suspicion of venom lay under the words.

"I had a Mexican friend once," grinned Wayne by way of answer, "who was the wisest man I ever saw. He used to say, 'The day is made to rest, the night to sleep!' We will give our attention to Manana when Manana comes. Wanda!" he cried suddenly in the old impulsive way, "will you play something for me?"

Wayne and Wanda went to the piano. Mrs. Leland watched them, her face a little troubled, a little wistful. Garth and Martin Leland, after one swift exchange of glances, rose and went to the rancher's room where they remained for a long time. When at last they returned to the living room Leland glanced curiously at Wayne. He was sitting with Wanda upon the sofa under the big wall lamp, examining her pictures. Garth approached the sofa abruptly.

"We'd better be hitting the trail, Wayne, hadn't we?" he asked. "It's nearly ten o'clock and you remember it's six miles to bed."

Reluctantly Wayne Shandon said his good nights, calling in to Julia that he was going to expect a pie the next time he came, which would be to-morrow if Garth would let him, and the two men went out to their horses. Wanda, bright and happy, waved to the departing horsemen from the door and came back into the room to drop naturally into the silence which had fallen over her mother and father.

Long that night Wanda stared out through the darkness which lay about the orchard with no thought of sleep. She had the feeling that no one in the house was asleep yet, not even Julia whom she could hear now and then moving as softly as physical conditions permitted in her room. That her father and mother were awake, she knew from the drone of their voices coming to her indistinctly.

The spirit of restless anxiety falling upon a household is a thing to be felt through stick and stone and mortar. There had been no such spirit here to-night until Red Reckless had come home. He had not brought it with him, he had brought only his sheer madness of exuberant life, and yet he had left this other thing behind him. Wanda wondered what thoughts, what fears or evil premonitions troubled those other unsleeping brains.

Her own thoughts fled back a year and clung fearfully about the revolver with the pearl grip. She knew that the murder of his brother still remained a mystery and that people do not like mysteries to go long without solution. MacKelvey was sheriff, it was his duty, and it was his habit, to bring some man to book for every crime committed in the county. It was quite possible that the sheriff had been playing a waiting game throughout the year, and that he was waiting for this man to come back as he must do soon or late.

Meanwhile the man who was so vividly in Wanda's thoughts rode through the silent night with his cousin, drinking deep of the peace of the starlit night, finding an old familiar music in the hammering of his horse's hoofs on the grassy hills. Silent himself while thinking of other days and other rides, he did not notice how silent Garth was. They topped the rocky ridge which stood as boundary line between the two ranges, and swerved westward taking the long curve to the Crossing, welcomed back to the home outfit by the great booming voice of the distant river. Another mile and the river itself, flashing, turbulent molten silver, swollen with the wet winter in the mountains, swept shouting past them.

They turned upward along the river and raced wordlessly the greater part of the remaining half mile to the Bar L-M corrals. When they drew rein in the wide clearing in which stood range house, bunk house, stables and corrals, there was no spark of light about. They unsaddled swiftly, turned their horses loose with a resounding slap to send them out toward the little enclosed pasture, and went up to the range house. At the door of the men's quarters Wayne stopped.

"I think I'll drop in and say hello to the boys," he remarked, already at the door.

"Are you crazy?" cried Garth. "They've been asleep two hours, man. And they've got a big day's work ahead of them to-morrow."

"Oh, shut up, Garth," laughed Wayne good naturedly. "Don't you ever think of anything but work? Come ahead, and watch me bring 'em to life!"

He flung open the door and entered, Garth following in stony silence. It was dark within the long, narrow room, although the starlight gleamed feebly through the dirty window panes. Wayne found the lantern upon the nail where it had hung when he was a boy, lighted it, and turned the wick low so that there was only a wan light in the bunk house.

"Where's Big Bill's bunk?" he whispered to Garth.

Chuckling softly he drew near the bunk which Garth indicated against the wall at the far end of the room. He leaned forward, stooping low, peering into the shadows. Big Bill was fast asleep, his great, deep lungs expelling his breath regularly and mightily, his head with its touseled ink black hair half hidden by the hairy arm flung up over it. Wayne tiptoed away from the bunk, moved two chairs further back against the other wall, and still chuckling with vastly amused anticipation, again approached Big Bill's bedside.

He put out his hands slowly, gently, until they slipped into Big Bill's arm pits. Then, his laughter suddenly booming out he bunched his muscles and a black haired giant of a man in shirt and underdrawers was jerked floundering out of his bunk to the middle of the room.

Big Bill's mighty roar of mingled astonishment and anger brought a dozen cowboys leaping out of their bunks. In the dimly lighted room their blinking eyes made out the forms of two men struggling, one in his night dress, the other in hat and boots. One was Big Bill, for his roar was an unmistakable as the roar of summer thunder. But the other?

"I've been hungering to get my hands on you for a year!" came the laughing voice of the man in hat and boots. "You said that you could roll me, Bill. Now go to it!"

He lifted the mighty body of the struggling, half wakened cowboy clean off the floor, carried him across the room and slammed him down in a chair.

"It's Red Reckless!" cried a voice from the group of stupefied men. "He's come home!"

"You ol' son-of-a-gun!" bellowed Big Bill, half in the surly anger which is the natural right of a man rudely awakened, half in tremulous joy. "Wait ontil I git my eyes open good an' I'll roll you like you was dough an' I'm makin' biscuits out'n you!"

Evidently he had his eyes "open good" before he had done talking. He was upon his feet, the big, swaying body oddly like a clumsy black bear's, his big hands lifted in front of him. And then he threw himself forward, close to two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn and bone hurled like a boulder from a catapult. Some one had turned up the lantern wick. The black head and the red head from which the hat had dropped came together, there was the thud of two strong bodies meeting with an impact that brought a little coughing grunt from each, and Red Reckless had done what any man must do before such a thunderbolt. He was flung backward, went down, and the two big bodies struck hard upon the bare floor. And above the crash of the falling bodies there were two other sounds, Big Bill's grunt, and the laughter of Red Reckless.

They were down, and Big Bill was topmost. But by the laws of the game a man must be forced back until his two shoulders touch the floor before he is beaten. Wayne Shandon's left shoulder was still two inches from the floor.

"You would wake a man up," grumbled Big Bill with that fierceness of tone which spoke a moment of rare delight.

"I'm going to show you something, Bill," gasped Wayne, half choked with the breath driven out of his lungs by the great bulk on top of him and by the laughter within his soul which had not been driven out. "Something I learned from a Jap about three feet high. It cost me a hundred dollars and a broken collar bone. I'll let you off easier, Bill."

The light was none too good, perhaps the boys were not yet wide awake. They didn't know how the trick was done, and it wasn't at all clear to Big Bill.

Wayne seemed to grow very limp beneath his hard hands and watchful eyes. Ready for trickery Big Bill, while he bore down hard on the left shoulder, and wrenched and twisted at the corded neck, expected anything. He had considerably less respect for a Jap than for a horse, looking upon the race as mimicking apes and not men at all, and he had no wish to be bested by a Jap trick. Yet Big Bill didn't understand.

Somehow Wayne Shandon slipping out of Bill's grasp like an eel through its native mud, had run an arm under his left arm pit, around his neck, over his right shoulder. Wayne's left hand leaped to Big Bill's right wrist. Bill felt that his neck was breaking, that his right arm was broken. And then he knew that Wayne was upon his knees, that his own two hundred and fifty pounds of big battling body were lifted high from the floor, that he was jerked sideways and slammed down. And then the boys were laughing and Wayne stood over him, laughing too, and he knew that his two big shoulder blades had struck the floor together.

"It's a damn' Jap trick," he muttered, more than half angry now, flinging himself to his feet. "White man's fightin' I c'n lick every inch of you from red hair to toe nails."

But Red Reckless was laughing and shaking hands all round and Big Bill found no one to listen to the explanations he made. One after another the owner of the outfit greeted warmly the men who were working for him. Then he swung about, and went back to Big Bill.

"Shake, Bill," he cried. "It was rather a mean trick to do you up to-night but I couldn't wait until morning. I'll give you another chance when you like."

Big Bill grinned and his hard brown hand shut tight about Wayne's.

"There'll be lots of chances," he said shortly, his voice fierce, his black eyes very gentle. "You've come to stay, ain't you, Red?"

A look of vast disgust stole over Garth Conway's face.

"It's Bill and Red as if they're all dogs in one kennel," he muttered. "It isn't hard to forecast what's going to happen to a range with a boss like that!"

He waited a little restlessly for Wayne to finish the conversation into which he had entered with the crowd of cowboys who seemed to have forgotten that they had a day's work before them. But Wayne Shandon, too, seemed to have forgotten. He was half sitting on the table, one leg swinging, his quick hands rolling a cigarette from the "makings" proffered by Tony Harris, his laughing eyes filled with the joy of home coming, his tongue already busied with the answering of many rapid fire questions. No, he hadn't seen all of the world; it was bigger than they'd think. But he had played "gentleman's poker" with club dudes in London, he had hunted with niggers and potted many strange things from an alligator to a cow elephant, he had seen the pyramids—

While Garth lingered at the door, the other men, crowding closer to the man at the table, grew into a charmed circle about him, a picturesque congregation in their underclothes of grey and white and washed out pinks and blues. Within five minutes after the defeat of Big Bill every man of them was either making or smoking a cigarette with all thought of their tumbled bunks forgotten. There were many demands for first hand information concerning wild niggers and pyramids and the ways of the jungle; there were many exclamations testifying in mild profanity to startled wonderment. At last Garth, turning away, called out,

"I say, Wayne, you mustn't forget it's getting late. There's a big day's work for the boys to-morrow."

"This is my home coming celebration, Garth," Wayne laughed back at him. "Hang the work, man. We'll have a half holiday to-morrow if the whole outfit goes to pot."

Anything further Garth had to remark he said angrily to himself as he strode away to the range house. And Wayne, with no further interruption, explained how the games ran at Monte Carlo. Finally, since there was nothing in the world he had learned to love as he loved horses, he came to speak of the Derby.

"The greatest race in the world," he cried, slapping his thigh enthusiastically. "Just because it's the straightest and the stakes are right and the horses are as beautiful as women and as swift as lightning!"

One o'clock came and they were talking horses and racing, the men now upon common ground, their eyes bright with the tale retold of the Kings' race. And before it was two Red Reckless was standing erect upon his two feet, his eyes brighter than the rest, his voice leaping out eagerly as he cried:



CHAPTER VI

THE PROMISE OF LITTLE SAXON

Rose-bud, the unlovely Chinese cook, made the dawn hideous in the range house with his pots and pans and rattling stove lids. To him appeared Red Reckless, touseled and sleepy eyed looking to the astonished oriental's vision like an avenging demon, threatening to choke him to death with his own pigtail and to roast him crisp and brown him in his own oven if he didn't conduct himself with less noise in his pastime of breakfast getting.

"Gollee!" Rose-bud found his tongue as Wayne disappeared into his bedroom. "Led, him come back some more. Led, him boss now!" He stood grinning in slant eyed cunning at the closed door. "Garth him all same go bye-bye now, maybeso?" He pondered the question, with his evil featured head cocked to one side. Then his grin became more profoundly Chinese, more radiantly joyful. "All same hell pop all time now."

And he went about his preparations for breakfast in strange, complacent silence, making his coffee twice as strong as he had made it for a year, the way Red Reckless liked it.

Garth Conway breakfasted alone. A glance out toward the bunk house against the fringe of trees at the far side of the clearing showed him that there was no smoke there, that the men were not about. A little angry spot glowing on each cheek he stepped out upon the porch as though to bring these slumbering men to a swift awakening. But he turned instead and came back into the dining room.

"You Chink fool," he flung at Rose-bud when his cup of coffee was set in front of him. "I don't drink ink for breakfast. What's the matter with you?"

Rose-bud wrapped his body in his long arms and his face in its childish smile, lifted his vague hints of eyebrows archly and nodded toward Wayne's room.

"Led, him come back," he said with unutterable sweetness. "Him like coffee all same black as hell. Him boss now? Too bad. You damn fine boss, Mis' Garth."

And he shuffled back to the stove leaving Garth scowling angrily after him.

Garth breakfasted in morose silence, disregarding the many joyful glances which Rose-bud directed upon him. Afterward he took out his pipe and stuffed it full with an impatient finger. The hesitation which had marked him last night seemed to grow with the slow hours of the idle morning. He had long been absolute, unquestioned dictator of the destiny of the Bar L-M, and he had grown naturally into the way of regarding it half with the eye of its permanent master. It had not only been his entirely so far as management was concerned for more than twelve months, but there had been always the possibility that it would be his to have and to hold, to do with as he thought best, if Wayne should not come back. But Wayne had come back. The coffee was eloquent of the fact; the slothfulness of the bunk house shouted it in his ears. He felt a sense of irritation, of injustice.

"The men will sleep until noon," he growled savagely. "Good heavens, is he crazy? Must he come back and chuck the whole thing to the dogs?"

There was nothing to do but smoke and wait for the next absurdity of a man who had played ducks and drakes with everything he had ever had, who was too big a fool to see—or care, which was it?—what was going to happen when he had run to the end of his rope.

Wayne, rosy from head to foot from his rough bath towel, tingling with the leaping life within him, showing no signs of the all but sleepless night, came out to breakfast before Garth had finished his pipe. He caught Rose-bud by the two shoulders, drove him back against the wall and held him there while he spoke to him.

"I've a notion to jam you through into the other room, you yellow heathen," he informed the cook whose smile was just a trifle uncertain. "If the coffee is good I'll let you off."

Rose-bud's smile became radiant immediately. He poured out the black beverage with the air of a magician conjuring a stream of gold from the old coffee pot, and evinced as great a pleasure in watching Wayne dispose of his breakfast as Wayne himself manifested in the act. Garth came back into the room while his cousin was eating.

"Well, Wayne," he said. "What's the bill of fare for the day?"

Shandon nodded, swallowed and bade Garth a cheery "Good morning."

"To-day?" he repeated after his cousin. "I'm just going to get a live horse between my legs and ride! Big Bill tells me that no man has thrown a leg over Lightfoot's back since I left, and that she's just full of hell and mustard and aching for a scamper. Bill knows where she is; he's going with me to help round her up and then . . ."

"Well?" questioned Garth drily. "You're going to work on her to-day?"

Shandon laughed.

"Who said anything about work? You're growing to be an awful sobersides, old fellow. Here I haven't been back twenty-four hours and you're already suggesting that I shove my neck into the yoke. Now, you ought to know better than that."

Garth drew deeply at his pipe, his lips tight about the stem.

"You haven't changed much, Wayne," he said presently.

"Who wants to change?" Shandon retorted lightly. "One would think I'd been away ten years and it was time for grey hairs and long hours of sitting still in the sun." He favoured his cousin with a merry, searching glance and added, "You haven't changed much yourself that I can see."

For no apparent reason Conway flushed slightly and then frowned.

"I had a good hard day's work cut out for the boys," he said casually.

"You're finding plenty to keep them busy, I'll bet," grinned Shandon.

"Yes," carelessly. "We're a bit short handed just now and there is always a lot to do. I've let a man go here and there when he was just eating his head off for us. A half day lost means that much more hard work to be made up."

"Get them busy then, will you, Garth? It's decent of you to save all you could for me, but hang it, don't mind putting on a new man when we need him. The boys have had enough sleep by now and I've sort of slipped out of the routine of the work. Will you go ahead and run the outfit for me until I get back into it? It would be a big favour to me."

Conway swung about toward the door eagerly, and so swiftly that Shandon did not see the light that sprang up in his eyes.

"Glad to," he called back as he went out. "Take your time about getting back into the traces, Wayne."

"Good old Garth," Shandon muttered with deep satisfaction. And then he turned his attention again to the biscuits and bacon.

Garth went immediately to the bunk house. He found the men all asleep; he left them all wide awake.

"Tony," he cried sharply, "come alive there and get the boys some breakfast. You men know that Mr. Shandon is back, don't you? Do you want him to think that this is the way we've been attending to his business for him while he was gone? Bill, get a couple of horses saddled while Harris is getting breakfast for you, and as soon as you eat report at the house with them. You are to help find Lightfoot."

The boys scrambled out of their bunks, and Tony Harris in picturesque night raiment was thrusting paper and kindling into his stove before Garth had gone ten steps from the door he had slammed behind him. Did they want Wayne Shandon to think that they had neglected his interests in his absence? Not by a jug full, growled Big Bill. And he wasn't the kind to think it in the first place or to care in the second, he grunted as he jerked on his overalls and shoved his big feet into his shoes. Mister Shandon! Huh!

But they took their cue from Conway's sharp words and did not wait for breakfast to get ready for the day's work. Big Bill was the first in the corral but the others came trooping after him, roping their horses, saddling and bringing them to the bunk house door to be mounted swiftly as soon as the morning meal could be finished. And, as usual little Andy Jennings saddled an extra horse, a graceful, cat-footed mare, cream coloured, with white mane and tail, for Garth Conway.

There were few words spoken in the bunk house as the men made their hurried meal. Steve Dunham demanded to be told if Red was going to let Conway "run things" for him, or if he was going to be his own foreman as his brother had been before him. More than one man lifted his shoulders at the question. And since there was no answer to be given yet, since that was the one thing they were all thinking about, it was almost a wordless meal.

In a little while Garth Conway was back at the bunk house and swung up into the saddle, his perfect animal, his own graceful form, his somewhat picturesque costume, riding breeches, puttees, wide soft hat and gauntlets making a bit of pleasant colour against the commonplaceness of the ranch yard. He waited impatiently a few minutes until the men came out and then rode away toward the lower end of the valley ordering them curtly to follow him. It was Garth's way; they didn't know what the day's work was to be, although they might come close to guessing, until he chose to tell them. Big Bill alone remained behind, making his way with two horses to the house, where Wayne came down the steps to meet him.

"Hello, Bill," Wayne greeted him lightly. "Feeling sore this morning?"

"Hello, Red," Big Bill retorted with what was meant to be a scowl but which twisted itself in spite of him into a widening grin. "Not sore outside, seein' as I fell easy. Jus' kinda sore inside thinkin' you'd go an' play a low down Jap trick on a man. But nex' time . . ."

He shook his head in mock sorrow thinking of the thing that was going to happen to the merry eyed man from whom he took his pay.

Red laughed, strapped on the spurs clinking at the saddle horn, vaulted from the steps to his horse's back and bending suddenly forward shot ahead of Big Bill, and sped toward the upper end of the valley where the unused horses were grazing. The cowboy, racing behind him, watched him with shrewd eyes and a grunted comment that he hadn't forgotten how to ride.

When the horses had "run off" their early morning restlessness the two men drew them down to a swinging walk and riding side by side found much to talk about. Shandon asked about this, that and the other horse, giving each its name as if they were men he spoke of, and Big Bill reported promptly and in full detail. Brown Babe had been sick during the winter; a cold running on until it was touch and go if she'd go down with the pneumonia. Doc Trip had taken a hand though, Bill himself having ridden thirty miles to fetch the cowboy who had a rude skill as a veterinary and no little reputation with it, and Brown Babe had pulled through as good as a two year old. Her colt out of Saxon? Say there was a bit of horse flesh for you! Close to three year old now and never a rope on him. Little Saxon they called him. Little? Big Bill laughed softly. The name had stuck since he had been a colt. He was bigger than his dad already, although not so heavy, of course, and he had more speed right now than his mother ever thought of having. If they ever did put on a race—Endymion, Little Saxon's full brother? Big Bill shook his head and spat thoughtfully. Sold six months ago.

"Sold?" cried Shandon sharply. "Who sold him?"

"Conway, of course. He's the only man as has sold any Bar L-M stock."

Shandon started to speak, then closed his lips tightly. Big Bill looked at him quickly, then drew his eyes away and let them rest upon his horse's bobbing ears.

"Of course Garth couldn't know that I didn't want any of the horses, the best horses, sold," Shandon said quietly after a moment. "I wrote to him to use his own judgment in all things, to sell and buy as he thought best. It isn't his fault but— Hang it, I'm just a little sorry I didn't think to tell him. Who bought Endymion, Bill?"

"Sledge Hume," answered Big Bill. "He was crazy stuck on the colt the firs' time he ever laid eyes on him. I guess Conway held him up for a pretty stiff price too. He sure had the chance."

"So Hume bought Endymion," said Shandon thoughtfully. And he seemed less pleased than before. "Oh, well, we'll see what we can do with Little Saxon."

"Little Saxon's a better horse any day in the week," cried Big Bill loyally. "He ain't got the stren'th yet, of course, an' he ain't got the savvy as comes with trainin'. But he's got the speed an' he's got the spirit. Lord, Red, you've got a horse there! Wait ontil you see him runnin' with the herd. He don't eat dust off nobody's heels."

Shandon's eyes brightened. He had seen possibilities in the two year old before he went away, when the colt belonged to Arthur, and it was good to know that Little Saxon had fulfilled the promise of youth. And he saw too, a morning's work ahead of him, such work as the leaping spirit of Red Reckless loved. A wild scamper across the upper end of the narrow valley, skirting the lake perhaps; a headlong race after a horse born of Brown Babe and the high spirited stallion Saxon; the swinging of a rope in a hand that had not known the feel of one for a year; and the final conquest that would come when at last that rope settled about the defiant neck.

"For we'll get Lightfoot first, Bill," he said eagerly. "Little Saxon'll have to go some when I've got Lady Lightfoot under me. And then we'll take the three year old in and begin breaking him."

Big Bill chuckled joyously. And as Garth had said before him he muttered that Wayne Shandon hadn't changed much.

As they rode the valley widened for a little before them, the steep wall of cliffs and crags drawing back upon the right, lifting their crests ever higher, topped by few scattering pines, firs and tamaracks. Here and there a giant cedar flourished in isolated majesty, lifting its delicately formed cones a hundred and fifty feet above its ancient, gnarled roots. The valley itself was for the most part clear of timber and scrub. The herds had not yet come up here this year, and would not come until the lower end had been thoroughly fed off. For here there would be grazing land in abundance until the winter came and all herds must be moved to the pastures far down the mountains where the snow fall was never more than a few thawing inches.

Conversation between the two men died down as they pushed deeper into the solitudes. When they had ridden a couple of miles, the valley narrowed again, the timber line crept in closer at every yard, the mountains drew in abruptly and rose more precipitously in sheer, frowning, dominant majesty, the river shot hissing down its rocky course, a wild thing plunging madly toward freedom and an open world.

So with few words, each man's thoughts wandering as chance and the river and mountains directed them, Shandon and Big Bill rode slowly. That trail brought them at last down close to the edge of the stream as the banks on either hand drew closer together until finally the water choked and fumed and thundered through a narrow pass. Here they must turn away from its course, climbing a steep shoulder of the mountain, making a difficult way along a seldom used trail, until they came to the crest of the ridge which shot down from the right. Another fifty yards, almost level going, a steep descent and suddenly the fury of the river was but a faint rumbling in their ears, the stillness of the mountains crept down on them and they were at the margin of Laughter Lake.

With a sigh long, deep, lung filling, Wayne Shandon curbed his horse to a standstill. Big Bill turned his head away and a little hurriedly sought for his "makings." For Big Bill had a memory, as so many sons of the frontier places have, a memory that filed and kept record of little things as well as of what the world calls big things. He remembered the day when Wayne Shandon had last ridden here, just the day before Arthur was killed. Wayne and Arthur had come here together; Arthur with some business reason, of course; equally of course Wayne in a mere spirit of idling. The younger brother had ridden along to try out a new rifle he had bought—

"Come on, Bill. Let's find the horses."

Wayne leaned forward suddenly in the saddle, loosened his reins and touched his horse's sides with his spurred heels. And so they raced along the side of the lake as they had raced from the range house, Red Reckless sitting straight in the saddle, his head lifted, his broad hat pushed far back, his tall, powerful body swaying gracefully, easily with his horse's stride.

They found Lady Lightfoot with a herd of half wild animals in a little hollow beyond the head of the lake. A great snorting and stamping, a flinging aloft of proud heads upon arching necks, the flurry of manes and tails, black, red, white, all confused in a rush of colour, the hammering thud of unshod hoofs on soft grassy soil and the herd had followed Lady Lightfoot's lead in wild flight toward the far end of the tiny valley. A wonderful creature was Lady Lightfoot, trim and slender and graceful as a maiden, her coat a little rough from her year in the woods, her silken mane snarled, but her spirit showing in the toss of her head, the cock of her ears, the flare of her nostrils, the fire of her eyes.

"Watch!" yelled Big Bill as he and Shandon thundered along after them, their ropes already in their hands, nooses widening. "See who takes her lead away from her!"

It was half a mile to the far end of the little valley where the almost sheer pitch of the mountains would bring the fleeing animals to a stop. And before they had gone a hundred yards Wayne Shandon's eyes had discovered Little Saxon.

The colt had been almost the last of the two score horses when their startled flight began; already he was seeking the place that was rightfully his, already he had passed half of the herd and running like some great greyhound, was eating up the distance which lay between his outstretched nose and Lady Lightfoot's flickering hoofs. A horse to be seen in a flash by a knowing eye even in a herd many times bigger than this one. A king of a horse, standing a hand taller than the tallest of his companions, with great flowing muscles moving liquidly, with iron lungs under a vast iron chest, with a neck every fine line of which revealed the racing thoroughbred, with tireless strength in the tensing shoulders and hips, with speed in the delicately formed, slender legs; running easily, every leaping stride hurling his great body in advance of some one of the other horses, his floating mane and tail spun silk that flashed in the sun like shimmering gold, his flashing hoofs like a deer's for dainty grace, his coat a deep, rich, red bay.

"Watch him run!" shouted Big Bill. "Watch him run!"

Two lengths behind Lady Lightfoot, a length . . . and then Little Saxon had slipped by, flashed by, passed like a gleam of summer sunlight, and the mare snapped viciously at the lean, clean body that brushed against her own, robbing her of her place. Big Bill laughed joyously.

"Jealous as a cat, huh, Red? See that?"

"And no man has ever ridden him," muttered Shandon. "Only one man is ever going to ride you, Little Saxon."

But that day they did not take Little Saxon with them back to the home corrals; it would be many a day yet before Little Saxon's training began, before his proud spirit compromised with steel and leather and a master's hand.

With half the distance to the far end of the little valley passed, Little Saxon was a length ahead of Lady Lightfoot, his quivering nostrils scenting danger behind, free range and freedom ahead. Thus Little Saxon first, Lady Lightfoot jealously guarding and keeping her place as second in the headlong flight, a slim barrelled sorrel close at the Lady's heels, the rest of the horses following in a close packed body, the fleeing animals came to the natural bulwark which the mountains lifted before them. Their ropes swinging in ever widening loops, hissing swifter and swifter until in broadening circles they sang shrilly, Wayne Shandon and Big Bill swept on after them.

"Lightfoot first!" cried Shandon sharply. "It's too rocky, Bill—"

The ground was too broken to chance putting a rope over the defiant neck of the three year old who had never known what it was to have hemp touch his lithe body. With Lady Lightfoot it was different. She would leap aside, she would throw her head one way or the other as she saw the lasso leave the hand of her would-be captor; but once it touched her she would stop stone still, too wise, too experienced to struggle against the inevitable.

At last the fleeing horses stopped, whirled and with up-pricked ears and flashing eyes waited and watched. Lady Lightfoot's angry snort trumpeted her fear and defiance; she moved not so much as a muscle except of her eyes which swept swiftly back and forth from Big Bill to Shandon, from Shandon to Big Bill. Then, as almost at the same instant two ropes sped their hissing way toward her she leaped forward, swerved aside, dropped her head a little—and then, instead of breaking into a wild flight, she bunched her four feet and slid to a trembling standstill before either rope had tightened about a steel saddle horn.

"Wise ol' lady," chuckled Big Bill as he and Shandon rode closer to the mare coiling their ropes. "Ain't forgot who's who, have you, Lady?"

The other horses saw their chance and took it. Little Saxon in the lead from the first terrified leap, they shot by Lady Lightfoot, swerved widely about Shandon, and were off and away down the valley.

"Let 'em go," cried Shandon. "We'll follow in a minute and drive them on down to the corrals."

He swung down from his saddle and went up to Lady Lightfoot's high lifted head, a head that rose higher in the air as he drew near. Laying a gentle hand on the quivering nose, he rubbed it softly, speaking to the animal in a tone that coaxed and soothed and assured. He talked to her as a man talks who loves a horse, understands it—as he might talk to a human being. And Big Bill, watching, nodded and grunted approval as he saw Shandon slip the hard bit between the strong teeth, and at last swing up into the saddle and turn a high spirited but well trained and obedient mare down the valley after the runaways.

Fifteen minutes later they caught up with the stragglers of Little Saxon's followers. And it was then that Little Saxon snorted his last defiance at pursuit and achieved his freedom.

The animals had been driven again into a woodland cul de sac. Here there was a wide reaching plot of grassy, unbroken soil, and here the two men counted upon teaching the three year old his first lesson of the supremacy of man. As they drew nearer their ropes were again ready, trailing at their sides. Again the horses drew close together, bunched in a mass of watchful distrust. Little Saxon alone held slightly apart, his great head lifted high, scenting mischief. He saw the ropes before they were lifted, and at the first whirl of hemp into the hated loop he knew instinctively that it was he whom they threatened.

"We've got him," grunted Big Bill, confident too soon of easy victory.

Behind the herd rose the cliffs, in front the men came on and at the side was a deep gorge, so steep sided that a horse would not think of going down into it, washed wide by the spring torrents. It never entered Big Bill's head nor Wayne Shandon's nor the heads of the terrified companions of Little Saxon that there was a way in that direction open for flight. But Little Saxon saw his enemies coming threateningly nearer and he took his chance. He drew back until his golden tail swept the granite cliffs; he paused there a brief second, with flashing eyes, measuring chance and distance; he gathered his great muscles as he had never gathered them before; his vast chest swelled to a mighty sigh; and then, before Wayne Shandon or Big Bill had guessed the plan that had risen in his brain he had wagered his life against his liberty.

"Back, Bill!" shouted Shandon warningly, throwing Lady Lightfoot back on her haunches, swinging her away from the plunging three year old. "He's going to jump!"

"God!" yelled Big Bill, as he too jerked his horse back. "He'll break his neck!"

They saw the big horse running, already as a blur of speed before he had done the thirty yards to the rock walled gorge, saw the glinting light from floating mane and tail, heard the thunder of his pounding hoofs, and then—

Then Little Saxon put into his gliding muscles all of the thoroughbred spirit that was in his blood, and taking recklessly his one chance he hurled his great body forward, leaping splendidly. For an instant as that rebellious, beautiful body was suspended in mid air, high above certain death, neither man breathed. Then, with the sharp sound of hard hoofs striking hard rock, Little Saxon landed easily and safely upon the far side, and his silken mane, flowing tail and red bay hide shining with a metallic gleam in the sunlight, he had passed on, through the trees, into an open trail, around a bend and out of sight.

Big Bill rode close up to the gorge.

"I wouldn't jump a horse acrost that for a million dollars!" he said, wondering at what he had seen.

And Wayne Shandon, his eyes very bright, his face a little flushed, cried eagerly,

"A mere horse, no. But Little Saxon isn't that! He's more clean spirit than horse flesh!"

Big Bill did not answer. Perhaps he had not heard. He was thinking:

"When he does break Little Saxon—that wild devil of a man on that wild devil of a horse— What a pair of them!"



CHAPTER VII

THE GLADNESS THAT SINGS

"Well?" laughingly. "Don't you know me?"

Wayne Shandon, riding idly down a lane through the pines, had come close before he saw her sitting with her back to a tree, her camera and empty lunch basket lying beside her. He had left Big Bill and had come on alone, passing around the head of the lake and following the trail which Little Saxon's flying hoofs had made in the fresh sod. Now, as with a quick hand upon Lady Lightfoot's reins he came to a stop, he very promptly forgot all about Little Saxon.

The girl, leaving Gypsy tethered beyond a grove of firs, had found upon the skirt of a densely wooded slope a spot that was like a corner of a woodland fairyland, dim and dusky and sweet scented. The noontide was warm with the rippling sunlight above, a down-filtering ray touched her bare head and dropped flecks of gold in her braided hair.

Shandon, motionless for a little, did not speak nor did his expression change except that it grew more frankly filled with admiration, with sheer wonder at her loveliness.

"Really," she bantered, still laughingly, not to be confused by her old playfellow's look. "I'm neither ghost, goblin nor evil spirit, nor anything worse than just a girl, you know!"

"Are you . . . just a girl?" He raised his hand slowly, lifting his hat. But not yet did he smile back into her smiling eyes. She had never seen him so grave. "I don't know. You are not the same girl I used to know."

"Why, Wayne," she retorted merrily. "It's only a year. You weren't expecting wrinkles already, were you?"

The steadiness of his gaze made her wonder. His eyes clung to hers for a long moment, left them to travel swiftly up and down the sweet young body that was no longer the body of "just a girl," noted how wonderfully the promise of girlhood had been fulfilled in budding womanhood, came back to her hair and throat and smiling mouth, rested again upon her eyes.

"You are not the same Wanda I used to know," he insisted soberly, shaking his head at her. "Not the Wanda I used to play with at school, to hunt birds' nests with, to steal apples for, to fight other boys for. Who are you, you wonderful thing?"

"The same Wanda," she told him merrily. "And, if you please, not a thing at all."

"Do you remember," he went on quietly, still gently serious, "the day when I whipped little Willie Thorp for you?"

"Yes," she answered lightly, yet not remembering all that he remembered. "Of course. You—"

"You came and put both little fat, warm, sun-burned arms round me and kissed me then, Wanda. Would you kiss me now?"

"You should have said that last night," she dimpled up at him. She thought she knew him too well to take him seriously when he dropped into one of his bantering moods, just trying perhaps to see if he could drive a little flush of confusion into her cheeks. "I was so glad to see you, I might have forgotten I had grown up. That we have grown up," she said.

"I wish I had," he said abruptly, flinging his head up with the old gesture she remembered so well. "Wanda, you are the most wonderful girl-woman in the world! What has happened to you? What have you done to yourself? What have you done to your eyes? Do you know, Miss Wanda Leland—are you a little witch and do you do it on purpose?—that those two eyes of yours can make madness in a man's soul?"

"Flatterer!" she countered brightly. "Have you been a whole year making pretty speeches, and must you keep it up now because you've got into the habit and since the pretty ladles of your travels are not here and I am? Aren't you a little bit ashamed of yourself? Aren't you afraid that you will create havoc by putting a lot of foolish ideas into a country girl's head?"

He laughed at last, becoming suddenly the same old Red Reckless that he had always been, and swung down lightly from the saddle. Dropping Lady Lightfoot's reins to the ground he came to where Wanda sat and having stood over her a moment looking down into the clear eyes which were turned frankly up to him he made himself comfortable at her feet, stretching luxuriously in the warm grass.

"It's great to be back, Wanda," he said musingly, with a deep sigh of content. "You are going to squander a little of your precious time on me, aren't you? I've been deucedly energetic all morning; now I'm just brimful of sunshine and laziness. So lazy that I want just to smoke and watch you and listen while you talk. You will have a whole lot to tell me about all the things you've been doing while I was away."



She gathered her knees into her clasped hands and smiled down upon the flaming red hair. Before he made his cigarette she found herself answering his questions, telling about her life during his absence.

As she talked she saw his face only now and then when he turned a little to laugh up at her over some trifle that amused him. The story of this year of her life as she told it was a simple, homely little tale, a quiet pastoral of happy content. It had to do largely with herself and her work, with her failures and successes. But she mentioned both Garth and Sledge Hume.

"Hume?" said Shandon, looking up quickly, this time with no laughter in his eyes. "Have you seen much of that man, Wanda?"

"A good deal. He and father and Garth seem to have some kind of business together. Why?"

"Because I don't like him," he told her emphatically. "I don't like to have you know a man like that."

She did not mention Hume again. She admitted frankly that she herself disliked the man although she had tried to think well of him because he was a friend of her father. Running on with the account of her winter adventures, and laughing at the memory of an incident that had been serious enough at the time, she told him how she had imperilled her life in heedless pursuit of the snow-shoe rabbit. Her mood, gay for the moment, was the sort to make light of things which had merely cast a shadow and gone; it was as though from the very presence of Wayne she had accepted his theory of life, the ability to live keenly, richly in the present, to be oblivious with sealed eyes to the future, careless with deaf ears to the mutterings of the past. She was talking freely, spontaneously, laughing from the very joy of life and the morning and another joy which she did not analyse, looking down at the sunlight caught flaring in his hair. And he, vastly contented, listened and laughed with her.

Then, in the midst of the recital of her last winter's mishap which she strove to make as unimportant as she now considered it, she looked down at Wayne Shandon and suddenly broke off in the middle of a word. He had dropped his cigarette, the hand that she could see had shut tight into a whitened fist, the colour of a second ago had seeped out of his bronzed cheek. As she stopped, wondering, he sprang to his feet and towered over her.

"Wanda!" he cried, and his voice was as unfamiliar in her ears as the view of his drawn face in her eyes.

"Wayne!" she said curiously, staring at him, startled and a little afraid of she knew not what. "Wayne! What is it?"

"What is it?" Shandon's voice had dropped lower, was so hoarse that it did not seem Wayne Shandon's voice at all. "It is just this—"

He broke off as sharply as she had done and moving swiftly as though driven by some great compelling force which dominated him he stooped and swept her up into his arms. She felt the tightening muscles as he drew her close, closer to him; felt a little tremor running through his whole body; heard the beating of his heart; was drawn nearer to him than she had ever been drawn to a man in her life; realised for the first time in a flutter of many sweeping emotions how superbly big and powerful the man was, how almost god-like in the beauty of his muscular manhood . . . and then she knew nothing but the wonderful fact that he had kissed her full upon her quivering red mouth.

"My God, Wanda, how I love you!" he exclaimed with sudden wild, unleashed vehemence. "Do you hear me?" He was holding her a little away from him, his arms still shaking about her shoulders, his voice frightening her with the vibrant fierceness that had leaped into it, the love in his eyes glowing like fire. "I love you so that I'd go through Hell to have you, to have you for mine, all mine! So that I might fight a man for daring to look at you, that I might kill a man for harming you! Wanda, girl, I tell you that I love you! Do you understand? Do you know what that means? What love means? When a man loves a woman as I do?"

Always a man of impulse, a man who through years of habit had grown to act swiftly in little things and big things alike, Wayne Shandon flung into impassioned words the emotions which swept through his soul and brain. The sight of Wanda Leland, grown into the sweet, pure beauty of early womanhood, had stirred him to the depths. Her casual mention of other men, Garth, and Sledge Hume, had displeased him so vaguely that he had not fully understood or cared why. And then the light allusion to the danger of death in which she had stood had been the spark in the powder train of his love, his words exploded from the seething consciousness newly awakened, fires long smouldering unsuspected in his heart burst forth in a mighty conflagration of emotion.

Throughout his whole being there was a strange, new, throbbing buoyancy, the gladness that sings, the joy that sparkles. The elixir of life had been set suddenly before him. He did not taste and put it away as some men do; he did not sip sparingly and temperately; but he drank deeply and swiftly so that the wine of love tingled through his blood, made his brain reel and his heart grow hot. It intoxicated his soul and his senses with a rare, glorious intoxication.

He tossed his head back, holding her still a little further from him, and looked into her eyes. His own had changed now, changed utterly in their eloquent speech. They had been fierce, now they grew wonderfully tender. They had been clear and bright and eager; and now they were misty. The first flame of love had leaped through his blood; now an infinite yearning, as gentle as tears, rose from his heart. Love had clamoured, now love was whispering. Love had been insistent; now it pleaded. It had been masterful; now it knelt.

"You love me—like that?"

The tumult in the man's soul had awakened conflicting emotions under the troubled, tremulous breasts. She looked at him with wide, clear eyes, wondering. A miracle, the old, eternal, primal miracle, had entered her life. She had looked down, laughingly, on a careless boy; she had been gripped mightily in the arms of a being new to her, a man who loved. From the clear blue of her life's sky there had leaped out a flash of lightning that filled the universe with its light and heat. They had been two gay loitering children; now she saw the man shaken in the gust of his passion.

"You love me—like that?"

"God forgive me, yes!"

His voice was steady now but low, scarcely louder than her awed whisper. He dropped his arms, letting them fall lingeringly, and stooping a little, touched her forehead with his lips.

"And," he said with a reverence which stirred her more than his rude embrace had done, "I love you like this, dear."

More often than not the story of one's life is a smooth running tale, the day's page turning gently, going on with the unfinished sentence of yesterday, the end of each little chapter guessed before it has been read. But there are times when the leaves no longer turn slowly but are caught in a sudden gust that sends them fluttering like dead leaves in a September gale; when life no longer loiters, but leaps when the unseen end of the chapter is a mystery, when the letters on the page are shining gold or fiery red.

Such a time had come into Wanda Leland's life. In one swift moment she had risen to a pinnacle, she had looked down upon the level lowlands from the heights. The monotony of the commonplace receded and was lost; the aspect of life upon which she looked was wonderful and new. There had been a change within her. She was no longer the Wanda Leland she had been a moment ago, the Wanda Leland she had been throughout the years of her life. Nor would she ever be exactly that same Wanda Leland again.

Revelation had been lightning, two-tongued. It showed her herself; it explained, it touched with light, it made distinct the shadowy things that had long lain in her breast. And it showed her Wayne Shandon as she had never seen him.

For years they had been playfellows, frank, almost boyish, both of them. Now her heart was beating wildly from the very touch of him. Had she always loved him? Had he always loved her? Was this wonderful, new thing, love, without beginning as it surely was without end?

She looked wonderingly into his eyes. Her own, like his, were clear, bright one moment, starry with a dimness as of unshed tears the next. Tenderness, like a mist, filled them.

"I love you, Wayne," she said, her voice low, trembling just a little, but clear. "I want you all mine as you want me. So that if you went up to Heaven or down to Hell I could go with you."

"Wanda!" he said. "Wanda."

She smiled a little at him and put out her two hands.



CHAPTER VIII

"A GAME OF BLUFF AND THE GAMBLER WINS!"

The spirit of unrest which Wanda had felt vaguely the night before did not depart with the passing of the darkness. Something was wrong, radically wrong at the Echo Creek ranch house. Since the unexpected home coming of Red Reckless there had been a subtle difference, a ruffling of the waters which usually ran so placidly at the country home, a darkening and disturbation of the surface which hinted at hidden whirlpools and cross currents.

It was from the master of the household that the day took its colour. In his own room last night he had been restless, sleepless until very late. Mrs. Leland had heard him walking up and down, had heard the noise of his pipe against his tobacco jar many times after the hour when Martin was in the habit of having his last smoke. In the morning he was up and dressed before Julia had built her fire. All day he was strangely pre-occupied and silent. He seemed scarcely to notice Wanda when she came into the dining room to give him his good morning kiss. That was unlike him. Both women noticed it.

After breakfast he did not go out. Instead he went immediately to his study, telling Julia sharply that she need not come in to sweep this morning as he was going to be busy. It was one of the few times he had spoken at all that morning, but not the first time he had spoken irritably. Mrs. Leland's eyes, following him were troubled.

In his private room he sat long at his big oaken table, his brows drawn thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed in deep speculation. The tenseness of the man's still figure, the gleam of the darkening eyes, the obvious moody abstraction told that some vital question had come to him for its answer, that he was fighting it out sternly, that the issue was one of those great issues of life which come soon or late and which must be decided, yes or no, upon the battle ground of a man's soul.

Three months ago he had done a thing from which, at first, his finer manhood had drawn back rebelliously. But—he had done it. There had been a struggle then between the two nicely balanced qualities which go to make up a human personality. The nice balance had been disturbed by clever generalship rather than by open battle. Specious reasoning, aided and abetted by the temptation of a rare opportunity, further reinforced by an emotion which was more or less selfish even while it masked itself as a public and private duty, had routed the sterner sense of justice of which the man was, not without reason, proud. He had in the end taken the step; being done it had since then been dismissed to a shadowy corner of his mind by his own strength of character; when he had thought of it had only grown stronger in his belief that he had done rightly. And now a man whom he had never expected to see again had come home; the question closed three months ago was still an open question.

A grave, strong minded man, calm by nature, after sixty years of the life of the mountains and forests, he thought to decide each action upon its own merit or demerit and to see that quality clearly, keeping his vision free of emotional mists. With such a man right and wrong are two distinct entities, sharply separate, with no debateable land. An action may not partake of each; it must stand forth black or white. A motive may not be enshrouded in uncertainty; it must be right or it must be wrong.

He questioned himself sternly to-day, frowningly concentrating his mind upon each point as he struggled with it. The time had come now when the decision he made must be one of absolute finality.

"What I am doing is a grave thing," he told himself over and over. "An unscrupulous man would do it in a flash; a weak man might be afraid of it. I must be neither unscrupulous nor cowardly; I must be just. And is not justice with me? Would I not be punishing the guilty, would I not be in a position to reward Garth Conway for a life of faithful service, would I not be justified in protecting my own interests, the interests of my wife and daughter?"

Already, unconsciously, he was seeking to discover for his groping mind the arguments which would acquit him in his own judgment and justify him.

"I hate him," he muttered, "God knows I hate him. But is that the reason I am striking at him? I should be wrong if for purely personal motives I sought to wreck vengeance upon him. But he is guilty, as guilty as hell! It would not be vengeance, it would be retribution. I should but be taking into my hands the work which God had set at my fingers' ends."

His problem instead of clarifying became complicated with involved motives. He told himself grimly that the thing which he had begun was just, merely just. If the courts of law did what he was doing and stopped with it men's voices would cry out against a retribution gone blind and decrepit, maudlin with mercy.

He went once to his safe in the corner, took out a document and stood looking at it thoughtfully for a long time. Finally he replaced it.

"I can ruin him, I can break him utterly," he said slowly. "I can wrest from him the thing which he took brutally with bloody hands. Because I am to profit where he loses must I hold back? The law may never reach him. Is it right then that he should go unpunished? The fortune which one day I shall leave to Wanda will be either swelled or diminished as I decide. Have I the right to draw back now?"

The day dragged on, the conflict within the man's soul continued. Until noon he was in his study. At the dinner table he was silent, morose, and ate little. He made no comment upon Wanda's absence; perhaps he did not notice it. Mrs. Leland, understanding readily that Wayne Shandon's return had its bearing upon her husband's heavy mood, found little to say. She could only hope wistfully that for a little Wayne would come to the house seldom, that Martin would grow used to having him in the neighbourhood, and that in the end he would content himself with ignoring the man whom she knew he disliked, distrusted and suspected. She thought that she understood fully what she grasped only in part.

In the afternoon again, Leland withdrew to his private room, again the battle between motives and desires raged hotly. It so happened that Wayne Shandon, appearing at a critical moment, brought about a decision.

Leland was standing before his window, his smouldering eyes frowning at the meadow down which Spring had come, scattering buttercups to mark her passing. He had not noticed the glossy chalices brimming with sunlight; the springtime had had no softening effect upon his absorbed and troubled mood. But presently the sight of two figures riding side by side down through the pasture whipped a new look into his eyes.

He watched them sharply as they rode toward the house. Their gay voices came to him lifted into soft laughter; their light merriment, so in tune with the springtime, fell jarringly on Leland's ears.

"The fellow has the insolence of Satan," he muttered angrily.

For a moment he lost sight of them as they passed behind the stable. Then, walking, Wanda's face lifted in rosy happiness, Wayne's like a boy's, eager and glad, they came on to the house. Leland stood stone still at the window; Wanda, catching sight of him, threw him a kiss. Wayne, with a brief word to Wanda left her under the cedars in the yard and came swiftly to the study, the light buoyancy of his step bespeaking the exhilaration that danced through his blood. He swept off his hat, put out his hand eagerly as he came into the room, his eyes filled with the brightness of a supreme happiness.

"I am glad that I found you in," he began impetuously. "I don't know how I could have waited . . . What's the matter, Mr. Leland?"

For Martin Leland, directing at him a piercing glance whose meaning was unmistakable, did not unclasp the hands behind his back.

"You had something to say to me," Leland reminded him briefly. "What is it?"

Shandon met his stare with silent surprise. Then, forcing himself to speak quietly, as though the insult of Leland's attitude had been unnoticed, he said:

"I wanted to tell you that I love Wanda, that some day I hope to make her my wife."

"What!" shouted Leland incredulously. "You—you want to marry my daughter! You!"

"Yes," said Wayne steadily. "I."

Martin's scornful laugh, forced and hard, drove the happiness from Shandon's eyes and a quick hot flush into his cheeks.

"I knew that you didn't like me," he said sharply. "But I didn't know—"

"That I have no feeling but utter loathing for you," Leland cut in coldly. "That I'd kill you like a dog before I'd allow you to disgrace my name, to wreck my daughter's life. Are you crazy or drunk?"

"I don't understand you," replied Shandon bluntly.

"Then I'll explain so that you will have no difficulty in understanding." Leland's voice, lifted a little, was hard and bitter. "I don't desire the continuance of your acquaintance. I don't want ever to see you again if it can be helped. I don't want you to come to my home, to speak to my wife or my daughter. I don't want your presence sullying the air they breathe. I don't want to have any dealings whatever with you. Have I explained?" he concluded with cutting sharpness.

"Everything and nothing!" Shandon returned, the flush seeping out of his face, leaving it grey. "What has happened? Why do you say such things to me? Good God, man, what have I done?"

For a moment Martin Leland made no reply; nor did his steady gaze waver from the eyes now as stern as his own which looked straight back at him.

"I don't care to discuss the thing with you, Shandon. You know as well as I do why I say them. When you pretend not to know you are at once a liar and a hypocrite."

"I am not a trouble seeker, Mr. Leland." Shandon's voice had grown husky as he strove with the anger within him. "But I think you know that you are the first man who has talked to me like that and got away with it. If I did not know that you are a fair minded man, and that there has been some hideous mistake somewhere, I'd not listen to those words even from you. Tell me what you mean."

A contemptuous smile broke the rigid line of Leland's set lips.

"Your theatrical ranting won't get you anywhere with me, Shandon. It is the thing to be expected. I am the master of my own house and it is quite enough when I say that your presence is not wanted here. If you want more you can supply it yourself. Idler, spendthrift, gambler, brawler, I have until now tolerated you. But there are some things that no man can tolerate. You have said that I am fair minded; the more reason I should wish to be rid of you."

"But," cried Shandon hotly, "the man accused has a right to know—"

"I am not accusing you," interrupted Martin coldly. "I do nothing but tell you that you are not the kind of man I want my womenfolk to associate with, not the kind I want to associate with, and that I want this to be the last time you set foot on my property. If you are not absolutely without pride of any sort you will not make it necessary for me to have you put off the ranch!"

"And you won't tell me—"

"So far as I am concerned the conversation is closed. And," drily, "the door is open."

The anger in Wayne Shandon's heart, unchecked at last, blazed in his eyes.

"I'll go now," he said shortly. "I have no wish to enter a man's house where I am not welcome. But what I have said I have meant. I shall see Wanda when I can, and when she will come to me as she will some day, I shall marry her."

"You are a fool as well as a scoundrel," shouted Leland as he saw the other turn toward the door. "Wanda, when she marries, will marry a gentleman, and not a cur and a coward!"

"Those are hard names, Mr. Leland!"

"Not so hard as another which belongs to you," came the vibrant rejoinder. "If you dare speak to her again—"

"As I most certainly shall," coolly.

"By God!" cried the old man, his clenched fist raised. "You leave my girl alone or—"

Caught in a sudden gust of rage such as had not half a dozen times in his lifetime touched his blood, he strode to his table, snatched open the drawer and whipped out a revolver.

"Go!" he shouted, his face a fiery red. "Go now, without another word, or I'll shoot you."

Wayne Shandon's head was flung up with the old gesture, his eyes grew steely and steady, and his answer was a cool contemptuous laugh.

"You have called me a coward," he said. "You called me a liar." He came back into the room and sat down upon the edge of the table, not three feet from Martin Leland. "Now, prove me the coward—or yourself the liar!"

It was a challenge of sheer reckless impudence, the tempting of a man whose reason was blind drunk with rage. He looked coolly into Leland's eyes ignoring the deadly weapon in Leland's hand.

"I am going to roll a cigarette," he said quietly. "I'll stay just that long."

The fingers which brought out tobacco and papers were unhurried. He opened the muslin bag, poured the tobacco into the trough of his paper, and his hands were steady. His eyes left Leland's a moment to make sure that he was not spilling any of the brown particles; he lifted them again as he sealed his finished cigarette with the tip of his tongue. He swept a match along his thigh; then he went out, closing the door softly, leaving a thin wisp of smoke trailing behind him.

Leland, alone in the study, put his hand to his forehead. It came away wet with sweat.

"A game of bluff and the gambler wins!" he muttered fiercely. "And now—God curse me if I spare him!"

His buoyant stride carried Red Reckless swiftly down into the yard where he had left Wanda. She looked up eagerly as he came swinging on. Then suddenly her heart stood still, chilled with the quick fear of her premonition. The smile which Shandon summoned was at once a brave attempt and a pitiful failure.

"What is it, Wayne?" asked Wanda quickly.

"Your father has forbidden me the ranch," he told her bitterly. "I don't know exactly why. It came out of a clear sky so far as I am concerned. He does not want me to come here again; he does not want you to see me at all, anywhere."

"Wayne!"

"He called me an idler, a spendthrift, a gambler and a brawler," he went on swiftly. "As I suppose I have been.—There has never been anything to make me care—until to-day! You won't let what he says make any difference, Wanda?"

She came closer to him, her eyes brilliant.

"I don't have to answer that question, Wayne," she whispered.

He took her into his arms and kissed the mouth turned up to him, and so left her. She watched him go down to the stable, watched the tall, upright form until Lady Lightfoot carried him out of sight through the pines. Then, her head as erect as her lover's had been, she went slowly to the house.



CHAPTER IX

THE CONTEMPT OF SLEDGE HUME

The window shades in the study were half drawn so that in the late afternoon the room was shadowy. From the fireplace crackling flames cast wavering gleams across the polished oaken table top and the heavy mission furniture. Leland had not stirred from the chair into which he had sunk after Wayne Shandon's going. Shandon had been gone an hour; he had met Garth Conway at the bridge and now Garth was with Leland.

There was no longer in the old man's eye or bearing a hint of the battle which he had fought all day. He had gone through the hours of his inner struggle and as it had ended three months ago so had it ended to-day. He knew that he would not open his mind to consider the question again. His full piercing eyes were stern and determined. Purposefully he had set his feet into the path he meant to follow without swerving. In a moment of hesitation and uncertainty the supreme argument had come to him; if for no other reason, he must ruin Shandon to save his own daughter from her folly.

"Garth," he said quietly, his deep voice retaining no trace of the emotion which had wracked him only an hour ago, "I am very glad that you have come. I have been expecting you all day."

"I met Wayne," Garth said hastily, watching Leland anxiously. "He was riding like the very devil. I never saw his face look as it did as he shot by me. He had been over here?"

"Yes. I had a plain talk with him. I made it clear to him that he was not again to set foot on my land."

"You didn't tell him—"

"I told him nothing! The man deserves no consideration at my hands. It is not my affair to tell him." He paused a moment, bending his gaze thoughtfully upon Conway's troubled face. "You have had time to think. What are you going to do?"

Garth opened his lips to speak, hesitated and closed them without a word. The air of uneasiness which he had brought with him into the room grew more marked. He shifted a little in his chair. Leland, watching him steadily, waited for him to speak.

"I don't know what to do," Conway blurted out finally. "You were so sure all the time he'd never come back.—Now if I don't tell him all about the mortgage and foreclosure there's chance on top of chance he'll find it out himself before the nine months drag by. And then—" He flashed a startled glance up at Leland's calm face. "He'd kill me! What can I do?"

"You can keep your mouth shut," answered Martin tersely. "You still have his power of attorney, haven't you?"

Garth nodded, his head down again, his fingers nervously busy with his lip.

"Conway," Leland continued with quiet emphasis, his keen glance watching for the effect of his words, "in sheer justice you have ten times more right to be owner of the Bar L-M than that mad fool has. You have slaved for over a year to make it what it is while he has been squandering money you had to scrape to send him. Even while Arthur was alive you were the actual manager. And now all that you have to do is keep still and you can have the place for a very small fragment of what it is worth. God knows I wouldn't put foot on it. There is nothing that the law can touch you for; we have seen to that. Nor will you be doing a dishonourable thing. It is sheer justice, Garth, that you and I will be meting out to him."

Conway's cheeks flushed a little, his eyes brightened at the thought of being some day the owner of the Bar L-M.

"But there's the chance—" he began.

"You are playing for big stakes," Leland reminded him crisply. "Of course there is a chance. But you exaggerate it. Play the game through and you will be a rich man before the year is out."

Before Conway could speak there came the clamorous barking of dogs in the yard and the noise of a horse's shod hoofs. In a moment there was a heavy booted stride up the steps and along the porch, followed by a loud rap at the study door. At Leland's nod Garth sprang to his feet and went quickly to the door, flinging it open.

For a second Sledge Hume's great frame filled the doorway as he paused, looking in sharply, drawing at his gauntlets. Then, brushing by Conway, he entered and stood with his back to the fireplace, still drawing off his gauntlets, his hat still low over his brows.

"Well?" he asked bluntly.

Just the short word, uttered as a command. There would be no wasting of words before they came straight to business. There was about the man, emanating apparently from his physical body something oddly like a materialised aura, bespeaking an aggressive character, a strong, dominant personality. Conway, alone with Leland, was a school boy in the presence of his master. Hume, ignoring Garth, challenged that superiority which Conway's weaker nature acknowledged unconsciously. The look of his eye, the very carriage of his handsome head, invited opposition, questioned an authority other than his own. A big, strong man physically his manner gave the impression that he was a big, strong man intellectually.

Old Martin did not at once speak but sat very still save for the restless fingers upon the table top. It was Conway who, after a brief hesitation, answered.

"We're going to stand pat—"

"I wasn't talking to you, Conway," said Hume coolly. "As far as I am concerned you aren't even a fifth wheel in this thing and you ought to know it. I want to know what Leland has got to say."

Garth coloured angrily but made no reply as he turned questioning eyes to the older man.

"Very well, Mr. Hume," said Leland quietly. "Do you care to sit down while we thresh things out?"

"No, I'll stand. Go ahead."

"To begin with, Wayne Shandon is back."

"I know he is back," spat out Hume. "That's why I'm here. What are you going to do now?"

"We are going ahead just as though he weren't here."

"You think that you can put the thing across?"

"Why not?"

"Just because," Hume shot back at him, "it doesn't seem likely that with the whole country knowing about the foreclosure of the mortgage somebody isn't going to do some talking."

Leland shook his head.

"Let me sum up the case for you," he said. "Arthur Shandon, the day before his death, mortgaged the Bar L-M to me for twenty-five thousand. When time for foreclosure came three months ago Wayne Shandon would have been notified if he had been here. As it was the notice went to his legal representative, Garth Conway. Conway allowed the Bar L-M to go under the hammer and at the sheriff's sale Conway himself bought it in—"

"For you," interjected Hume.

"Yes, for me. But who knows that? People who paid any attention to the transaction came to understand that it had been because of Wayne Shandon's known shiftlessness that the property was allowed to be sold, they knew that Conway was his agent, and that Conway bought it in. There is not a man living who knows anything about the matter who does not believe that Conway bought at Shandon's orders and with Shandon's money; and that the Bar L-M is Shandon's now and was never in any real danger from me. Is it likely then, that any man who believes this is, after this length of time, even going to think to mention the matter to Shandon?"

"You've got the chance to get by with it," said Hume slowly. "And it's a damned good chance."

"We all know the sort Shandon is," continued Leland. "I shall be surprised if he doesn't tire of the life here in six weeks, put through a sale of cattle, take the money and go again. With him away our chance becomes a certainty. In any case, I am going ahead with our work. I have had Garth look into the title of the Dry Lands and he finds that it is perfect."

"Yes. The land is mine and is clear."

"All we need now is the water and we are going to have that in another nine months when I shall have a clear deed to the Bar L-M. Garth and myself have gone ahead as I told you that we would, taking options on every acre we could get in Dry Valley. Before many days we shall virtually control the whole of the valley, just the three of us. Between us Garth and I have expended upwards of fifty thousand dollars in the last five weeks in options and out-right purchases."

"Let me see the papers," said Hume shortly.

Leland went to the safe and taking out a number of papers, handed them to Hume.

"All right as far as it goes," Hume said when at length he had finished his careful examination of the documents and had tossed them to the table. "You haven't got the Norfolk place nor the Ettinger place. What's the matter? They are more important to us than all the rest put together. Did they smell a rat?"

"I don't know. I am confident of closing with Norfolk in a few days, although I may have to pay him five dollars an acre more than I offered any one else. Ettinger is holding out for seventy-five thousand dollars, cash."

"Then he does smell a rat!" Hume's fist came crashing down upon the mantelpiece. "By God, somebody's been talking too much!"

"Mr. Hume," Leland reminded him sternly, "may I call to your attention the fact that nobody knows a thing about this matter excepting yourself, Garth and me? I haven't so much as told my wife—"

"You?" cried Hume hotly. "Who said that you had? You've got brains enough to hold your tongue. That's why I came to you in the first place. But Conway here—"

He swung suddenly upon Garth, his eyes flaming, his face distorted with wrath. Before either of the two men had guessed his purpose he strode swiftly across the room, and gripping Conway's shoulders with his two big hands jerked him to his feet.

"Conway," he snarled, his face close to the others, his eyes burning, his breath hot in Garth's blanched face, "you queer this deal with your infernal gab and I'll—"

He broke off sharply, flinging Conway backward from him so that the smaller man's body crashed against the wall.

"Hume!" cried Leland angrily. "I'll have no quarrelling in my house. If you can't act—"

"I haven't come here to-day for a love feast," sneered Hume, already forgetting Conway as he whirled upon Martin. "What I've got to say I'll say my way whether you and your cursed white rat like it or not. I say that somebody has been talking too damned much! That place of Ettinger's as it is, without the water, isn't worth twenty-five thousand. He'd have sold it for that a month ago and glad of the chance to unload. Now he holds out for seventy-five thousand! What's the answer? You've dragged Conway into this thing; I haven't. I wanted no man in it but you and Arthur Shandon and myself. You because you had the money, Arthur Shandon because he had the lake and the river. I didn't want Conway. He's your pet, not mine. Now, muzzle him if you can."

Garth's angry retort, the first word he had said since Hume sprang unexpectedly upon him, was lost in the low rumble of Martin Leland's heavy voice.

"You've said what you wanted to say, Mr. Hume. We've heard it. We understand each other. I can vouch for Conway's discretion. If you are as careful yourself we are all right. I'll attend to both Ettinger and Norfolk. I shall also see that at the end of the nine months the Bar L-M is mine and that we have the water for Dry Valley."

Hume laughed. Without again looking toward Conway he stooped, picked up the gauntlets he had let fall, and turned to the door.

"You are nobody's fool, Leland," he said patronisingly. "You are taking a chance in freezing Red Shandon out but the law can't go after you. And you stand to win a wad of money."

"Mr. Hume," interposed Leland sternly. "I am not taking over the Bar L-M because there happens to be money in it. I am simply using the weapon of retribution which God has seen fit to put into my hands—"

"Oh, rot!" grunted Hume sneeringly. "Don't come trying to square your conscience with me. I say, go to it, if you can get across with it."

He jerked the door open and then stopped suddenly his hand still on the knob.

"If you do slip up," he said bluntly, "if Red Shandon does hear about it and gets busy, let me know. If he starts making trouble I can put him where he'll be out of the way!"

The door closed loudly behind him.



CHAPTER X

SHANDON'S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

Wayne Shandon had grown more silent, more thoughtful than men had ever known him. The two things which had come to him, one as unheralded as the other, the gladness of a deep love, the bitterness which grew out of Martin Leland's words, he kept to himself. He rode far and alone, seeing very little of the men of the Bar L-M or of Garth, to whom he still left the routine of the range, and who made the most of small pretexts to keep up of Wayne's way. Shandon wanted time to think coolly and deliberately for the first time in his life; he wanted time to look inward as well as at what lay without, to cast up the balance of what sums of good and bad were in his soul.

Until now he had been quite content with life as he found it. It had afforded him infinite pleasure, it bubbled up sparklingly from the fountain of contented youth, there had been no need for him to seek to change its flashing current. Moreover, he had never had an incentive to bestir himself. But that incentive had come now, a two-pronged goad; he was compelled to look to himself, to his own positive effort, for what came next.

Vaguely, at first, he realised that a man if he be a man, has certain responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he became a machine. He felt dimly that he ought to be doing something like other men. He wanted his life to live freely as he knew how, largely as he sought to learn how. And he wanted Wanda.

At first he was like a sea-worthy ship, in a calm with no definite port in sight. But, in due course, from the one vital fact of his love for Wanda other facts materialised. To begin with he thought with diminishing bitterness of old Martin Leland. The man was old, and he loved his daughter. Rumours of a wild life fly incredibly high and far and fast. Such rumours of Red Reckless's doings had come to Leland's ears, and perhaps it was natural enough that Leland believed them. Shandon had always known his neighbour as a hard man but a just. He made up his mind not to quarrel with him, but instead to so change the tenor of his life that Martin Leland would notice and would approve. If in taking Wanda to her new home he closed her old one to her he would be hurting her.

He saw clearly, there being little foolish conceit in the man's makeup, that he was not worthy. And he understood, though vaguely at first, that it must be his one object now to become as worthy as any man could be of her. And when the fifth day came and Ruf Ettinger rode to the Bar L-M with excitement dancing in his eyes and his tongue clacking, Shandon thought that he saw a beginning.

Ruf Ettinger, a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog. He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm, expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried over it and then got drunk, careless of cost.

Shandon was surprised when he saw Ettinger ride up. He was more surprised at Ettinger's manner when he insisted on Shandon saddling and riding with him where there "wouldn't be no chance of bein' overheard."

Once clear of the house and outbuildings and in the valley where his shrewd little eyes made sure that no other ears than Shandon's would overhear, Ettinger plunged eagerly into his errand.

In brief it was this: Ettinger owned five hundred acres of valley land, down in Dry Valley, some thirty miles from the Bar L-M bunk house. Shandon knew the place well. Ettinger had, also, some money in the bank. How much it was not his cautious way to say until he was obliged to. How much would Shandon say his ranch was worth? Shandon did not know, but hazarded the guess that it might bring twenty-five dollars an acre. He did not consider it worth more because it was good grazing land only for part of the year, and like the rest of the valley there was scant water on it through the summer. Twelve thousand five hundred dollars?

Ettinger cackled; he could sell it to-morrow for seventy-five thousand!

Shandon began to feel the first dim stirrings of interest. Ettinger's excitement was too genuine not to awaken certain glimmerings of interest. Water, that was the thing! Now, if there were water, plenty of water, in Dry Valley; if a man could flood his land from brimming ditches then what would happen? The soil was deep and rich; it had been slipping down from the mountains for centuries; it had never been worn out by farming. Twenty-five dollars an acre? What were the other California valley lands worth where there was the same soil, no better climate and water galore? Napa Valley, Santa Clara Valley, Sacramento Valley? A hundred dollars an acre was dirt cheap; a man thought nothing of paying for a small ranch five hundred dollars an acre!